


Kitsune

by Dionys



Category: No Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Abusive Father, Abusive Relationships, Clueless seme, Devoted uke, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends to Lovers, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Kitsune/fox spirit, M/M, Straight best friend, The Little Prince - Freeform, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-29
Packaged: 2018-11-18 10:11:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11289132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dionys/pseuds/Dionys
Summary: When they’re seven years old, Eric rescues Ken’s little fox toy ‘Kitsune’ from the hands of bullies. This small act sparks a friendship that lasts into their twenties, with sweet-natured Ken continuously doting on the gruff and sometimes abrasive Eric.A story about a unique relationship, and the darker forces that lie in wait beneath it.





	1. ACT ONE

**1997**

‘I get migraines a lot,’ the little dark-haired boy said, in response to absolutely nothing.

The blonde boy looked over his shoulder, confused by the odd revelation as well as the cheerful way in which it had been delivered.

‘That’s weird,’ he said. He realised a second too late that he meant to say, and should have said, _‘You’re_ weird.’

‘Yeah, it’s pretty weird,’ the dark-haired boy echoed with a huge smile, happy to have been acknowledged in any way. He tottered along in the wake of the fair-haired boy, who was bigger than him and was walking too fast for him to keep up without jogging. They were both seven years old. It was lunchtime on a cloudless spring day in Goulston Elementary School.

‘I’m Ken,’ the smaller boy said breathlessly, his voice still upbeat.

The other one said nothing, hoping the kid would take the hint.

‘What’s your name?’ Ken prompted, still grinning.

The fair-haired boy looked down at him in contempt. How cheerful could someone be?

‘Eric,’ he replied stiffly.

‘Are we friends now?’ Ken wanted to know.

‘No.’

‘But you saved Kitsune.’

‘Who?’

Ken held up the little orange fox toy that dangled on the zipper on his canvas lunch box. Eric glanced at it out of the corner of his eye.

A few minutes ago, he had spied the tug of war over the lunch box. Two bigger boys had pushed the dark-haired kid to the ground and nearly made off with their prize before Eric, succumbing to a strange sense of justice that he didn’t think was entirely in keeping with his nature, wrenched the box out of the big kid’s hands.

The teacher on playground duty had sniffed trouble and turned to them, so the other kids didn’t try anything more. After they left, Eric returned the lunch box to the dark-haired boy without even sparing him a proper glance and went on his way. He didn’t have time to waste on annoying runts who got pushed to the ground too easily. It was that small act of heroism which had landed him in this particular fix.

He didn’t know the scuffle had taken place over the fox toy and not the lunch box. A fox toy with a stupid name.

‘They made fun of Kitsune’s name,’ Ken said, as though reading his mind. ‘They said they would throw him in a toilet to see if he could swim.’

Eric frowned slightly.

‘Thank you for saving him!’ Ken added, tripping a little over his own feet before righting himself and catching up again. ‘So we’re friends now, right? Because you saved Kitsune and because I know your name and because you know stuff about me like how I get migraines and how I have a fox named Kitsune —’

‘That doesn’t mean we’re friends,’ interjected Eric, who had grown more and more irritated.

‘Oh!’ said Ken, more surprised than upset.

But he followed Eric right across the playground again, chattering away, his face slightly flushed from the effort of jogging. His smile never left. Eric only managed to shake him when Ken had to stop to tie his shoelace; Eric glanced back and took the opportunity to dart out of sight.

The next day at recess, Ken found him again, to Eric’s eternal annoyance, and shadowed him again. Eric’s friends began to make fun of him as well as his new little charge. Eric was grateful that he and Ken were in different classes. He knew that at least when the bell rang, Ken would be forced to leave his side.

It turned out they were, however, in the same weekly reading group. As they filed into the library that day, Ken recognised Eric and his face lit up. When they were divided up into reading circles, Ken asked the teacher if he could switch groups so he could read with Eric. Holding the book they were reading, Ken plonked himself down on the carpet in their circle and waved exuberantly at Eric who sat only three feet away. Eric scowled and returned to his copy of _The Little Prince._  He was further annoyed at how enthusiastically Ken read out the passages when it was his turn, as though reading was fun and not the biggest waste of time in the world.

But after a while, Eric was faintly surprised to find that _The Little Prince_ made more sense to him when it was Ken’s turn to read it out. The other students read it in a monotone that only heightened how ridiculous the book was. Not Ken, though.

_“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”_

Ken’s voice was animated and suited the characters well.

_“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”_

Eric was so deeply engrossed in the unlikely conversation between the prince and the fox that he failed to notice the coincidence of the passage that had fallen to Ken to read. It was only the previous day that Eric had inadvertently rescued Ken’s fox from a watery fate.

An hour later, at home time, Eric happened to notice Ken being led away rather abruptly by a stern-looking man in a suit. His grip on Ken’s hand seemed too tight and his pace was slightly too quick. Eric realised, then, that Ken didn’t smile as much when it got close to home time.

The thought niggled in the back of Eric’s mind on the drive home. His mother didn’t notice, however. Her son took after his quiet, surly father — something that she was always secretly proud of — so she was used to long silences.

The following day, Eric stepped out onto the playground. His friends raced past with Joe’s new soccer ball, calling to him, eager to get to the grassy field beyond. But Eric stood still for a moment and scanned the school grounds. There was no sign of Ken. Sighing, vaguely irritated at himself, Eric tried to ignore his feeling of unease and followed his friends.

Then he heard footsteps. Or rather, he heard a specific set of footsteps that was somehow superimposed over the general patter of footsteps around him. He turned just in time to see Ken trip over his own feet again and go sprawling before getting back up with a smile.

‘I saw a dog this morning!’ he said breathlessly when he finally drew up to Eric. ‘He had yellow hair just like yours! I said his name should be Eric. The woman laughed. His owner.’

As Ken babbled, Eric saw the faint bruise on his arm and the bruise on his leg, neither of which owed to his little fall in the playground. Eric wasn’t old enough to understand what they could mean.

But he was old enough to realise that he was relieved. He realised that a part of him had been worried about Ken since he saw him at home time the previous day. He realised it relieved him to see Ken’s stupid, disproportionate smile, though disproportionate to _what,_ Eric couldn’t be sure. But even at seven, his intuition was correct. It was a smile that wasn’t warranted. It was a smile that deflected all the things that were wrong with the world. All the things lurking beneath the surface.

And so Eric stood there and scowled, trying to funnel his emotions into the appropriate course of action.

‘We’re playing soccer,’ he said gruffly, his expression unchanging.

Ken blinked. ‘Oh,’ he said, genuinely intrigued and nothing else.

Eric made a noise of frustration. ‘Want to play?’

‘Oh!’ Ken said again. Then his eyes widened and his smile changed. ‘Yes!’

Eric turned and headed for the football field without looking back. Ken took a moment to send a quick thank you to his Kitsune before he followed.

* * *

**1999**

Two years passed in the kind of blur that was typical of childhood. Ken became Eric’s shadow, and the pair of them became a familiar sight to students and teachers alike. Eric never paid Ken any more or less attention than any of his other friends, and though it seemed he only begrudgingly took on his new ward, he made no further attempt to shake Ken off.

In those two years, Ken came over to Eric’s place quite often. The first time Eric invited him, it was at the behest of his mother, who felt sorry for the little mixed-race child who didn’t seem to have any other friends, and she had urged her son to ask him to a sleepover. Ken had considered the question with wide eyes. And, to Eric’s surprise, he refused.

‘I’m not allowed,’ he said, in a small voice.

But after a few more weeks, Ken came to him one day and said he would be allowed, just once, because he had been a good boy that week.

Eric didn’t think anything of it. He didn’t even particularly want Ken to stay over. He did notice that Ken didn’t seem to have a lot of energy that day, as though a small hole had been poked in his side and the air had left him. But he seemed pleased enough to tell Eric that he had done whatever it was that allowed him to stay over at a friend's place. So Eric told him to bring his toothbrush and pyjamas and toys.

For Ken, that first night he spent in Eric’s room, after being pampered by Eric’s fair-haired mother, Rebecca, who smelled like lavender and talcum powder, was the best memory of his life for many, many years. He devoured the chocolate-chip cookies and laughed whenever Rebecca tried a joke, which was a rare treat for her given the quiet natures of her husband and son.

And Eric was surprised at how much fun he had. Ken was amazed at each toy he unearthed in Eric’s room — even the old action figures that Eric had grown bored of years ago — and each thing seemed to come to life through Ken's eyes. Eric's room was suddenly a battleground in the thirty-second century where cyborgs had taken over. And then, without any warning, the volcano in the corner had erupted and sent them into an ancient age where dinosaurs roamed, and they had to perch on the bed or chairs or other surfaces to avoid the lava that had spread to every square inch of carpet. Eric laughed when Ken toppled from the bed, tipping over the bin along the way and landing on the floor with part of his head inside it.

That night, Ken slept on the floor in a sleeping bag and Eric saw that he held onto Kitsune, his little fox toy, quite strongly in his right hand. Strangely, Eric wasn't embarrassed by the sight. He did, however, find it odd that Ken would go to the trouble of undoing it from his lunch box. He wondered if Ken did that every night.

Ken, meanwhile, went to sleep that first night torn between emotions; the sweet high and the safety and security of Eric’s home was pulling against the dread of knowing he would have to return home the following day.

After that first night, Ken came over every month or so for the next few years. Eric began to notice bit by bit that Ken would be less energetic on the days leading up to their sleepovers. He assumed Ken’s parents had him doing extra chores around the house in order to be allowed to stay over.

Eric never went to Ken’s house. Ken never invited him, and Eric never asked. It was a tacitly accepted part of their friendship.

They were both in fourth grade when Ken collapsed.

That day, they left school together. Eric’s mother wasn’t able to pick them up that day because she had to take Samantha, Eric’s sister, to a ballet recital. But it was only a twenty minute walk to Eric’s place and Ken already had his toothbrush and pyjamas.

Kitsune now dangled off the end of Ken’s bag rather than his lunch box. With Eric by his side, no one picked on Ken any more, and he was free to do and act as he liked. Kitsune no longer had to be hidden in his bag, or in his pencil case or on the zipper on his lunch box. The palm-sized orange fox, who had three tails, now jumped and jostled about on Ken’s backpack with each step.

‘That test was really hard,’ he said.

‘Mm,’ Eric replied.

‘I tried to study yesterday but I had a headache. The kind that becomes a migraine the next day.’

Eric glanced ahead of him where Alison Lee’s ponytail swung back and forth.

‘I hate when a migraine starts in a test,’ Ken chattered on. ‘I already suck at Maths.’

Eric grunted again. Alison caught his eye over her shoulder and smiled. Eric’s heart gave a small thud.

‘It’s still there,’ Ken said, frowning slightly and massaging his temples. Perhaps if he tried to focus on something else it would go away. He looked at Eric. ‘What did you get for the last question?’

‘What?’ Eric said, distracted. He wondered how he could get Alison to look at him again.

It was Ken’s turn to grunt. It was getting harder to keep sight of Eric. The sun was bright. Too bright. The cars driving by were too loud. It was like the school bell was still ringing between his ears.

‘This one,’ he said vaguely, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to focus on his feet. ‘This one… hurts.’ He paused. ‘Eric…’

‘What?’

‘My head hurts.’

Alison happened to hear what he said and cast him a curious glance. Eric grit his teeth. He normally didn’t mind the fact that everyone knew that Ken was his best friend, but he minded very much if Alison Lee thought less of him because of Ken’s weirdness.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Eric muttered under his breath.

Ken blinked. ‘I have… another migraine —’

‘Will you shut _up_ about your migraines? No one cares about your stupid migraines!’

His voice was too loud, even though he had spoken in a low, angry hiss.

‘Yeah,’ Ken replied automatically. Apologetically. Eric was always right. ‘Sorry.’

And then he fell.

Eric was far more focused on Alison than Ken, so he didn’t notice until he heard Ken hit the ground. He then turned to see Ken sprawled on his side on the grass by the footpath. His mouth was slightly open. Kitsune hung forward, almost touching Ken’s neck.

Alison’s hand flew to her mouth. Everyone stopped and turned.

Someone else — an older student — crouched in front of Ken before Eric even thought to move. Still shocked, as though he didn’t recognise the limp form on the ground as his friend, Eric stood there for a few more seconds.

That numbness remained when Ken refused to wake up. It didn’t seem like it was really happening. As he knelt on the sidewalk beside Ken and other voices and faces said things and did things and phones were taken out and an ambulance called, Eric only remembered what he had said to Ken before he passed out. He remembered that Ken had apologised, of all things, before promptly hitting the floor.

And he carried that guilt all the way to the hospital. He rode in the front seat of the ambulance because the paramedics didn’t want him to see anything that might happen in the back. Ken’s backpack was pressed on the seat between Eric's knees. Kitsune swung from side to side with each turn. The sirens howled. Eric stared straight ahead.

At the hospital, he had a glimpse of Ken being wheeled out of sight. He was told to sit somewhere, so he sat. When a nurse asked, he robotically recited his home phone number and then Ken’s. Rebecca arrived before Ken’s mother did. It was the first time Eric had ever seen her. Saiko was a small Japanese woman who seemed too young to have a child Ken’s age.

Ken was given the all-clear and Eric went in to see him shortly after Saiko was allowed in.

It was the first time anything like that had happened to Ken. The doctors had a complicated name for it that started with B and Eric didn’t register it. His mortification, his apology, was stuck somewhere in his throat. He hated the sight of tubes going into Ken’s nose. He was still holding Ken’s backpack.

Rebecca offered her support to Saiko whose gaze seemed vague and distracted, but she accepted with thanks. As they spoke, Eric approached Ken’s side. Not knowing what else to do, he put Ken’s backpack on a nearby table.

‘Thanks,’ Ken said weakly. His smile was slow, hampered by the breathing tube, but it spread wide — as wide as it always was. And Eric felt all sort of things that he didn’t understand. Mostly he felt foolish for having thought that Ken had been in any real danger.

From that point on, for years to come, if Ken ever looked like he had one of his migraines coming, Eric would ensure he was taken care of. That one experience when they were both nine left a specific tenderness in Eric that was removed from his overall gruffness, sometimes callousness, where Ken was concerned. It was something Ken would lean on guiltily, though he never once exploited it.

When Ken’s brief stint in hospital was coming to a close, Eric went to visit him again. Ken was looking like his usual self again. He was waiting for his father to pick him up. Rebecca gave him his favourite cookies in brightly wrapped cellophane and said she would wait in the hall. Eric gave him the homework he had missed over the past few days.

Ken sat cross-legged on the bed. Kitsune was unclipped from Ken’s bag and he held the toy in his lap.

‘It’s thanks to you that I got better,’ Ken declared.

‘What?’ Eric said, feeling the onsets of a scowl that was part incredulous and part self-conscious.

‘Because you picked up Kitsune that day when I fainted. And he was in the ambulance when you rode with me, all the way to the hospital.’ Ken’s voice was as lively as ever; a spry matter-of-factness that made each word sound true. ‘I’m glad you didn’t leave my bag behind. I was fine because he was in the ambulance.’

‘That’s stupid,’ Eric informed him.

‘Maybe,’ Ken said brightly. ‘But Kitsune has always helped people. He helped them get food in old times. And he has favourites and stuff that he follows. That part Grandma said a lot of people don’t know, but she knows, because she had a Kitsune that followed her. And she said she passed him onto me.’

It still sounded stupid to Eric but now that Ken had spoken of his grandmother and something that sounded suspiciously like a religion, he wasn’t bold enough to repeat his opinion. Besides that, he was somewhat pleased that Ken had praised him for something that had happened that day. It helped ease the guilt. He stared at the beads of the fox’s eyes, and the three tails. Eric had grown used to this strange number over the years, but it suddenly seemed prominent then.

‘Why does he have three tails?’

‘'Cause he’s getting older. They can have nine tails, some of them! The really old ones.’

‘Oh. So he gets a new tail every year?’

‘No, every hundred years. Or every thousand years. I can’t remember what Grandma said.’

Eric stared at the unassuming little fox with newfound awe.

‘Kitsune…’ Ken began, his voice very slightly different. ‘Kitsune can’t stop bad things from happening.’ He hesitated. ‘But if he’s nearby, I know that I — that it’ll be okay.’ Ken then glanced up with a smile. ‘He’s kind of like you.’

Eric blinked in confusion. He didn’t understand what he could possibly have in common with a small, ridiculous fox toy.

The door opened suddenly and Ken’s father came in. He was wearing the suit that Eric always saw him wearing when he came to pick Ken up from school. His face was square and there was a single vertical crease between his eyebrows. It was the first and only time Eric saw him up close. It left an impression.

And Ken’s smile was gone. He looked like he did every day at school over the past two years when it got close to home time and something seemed to dim the brightness from within, like a dial had been turned.

* * *

**2001**

Ken’s father died when Ken was eleven. He told Eric quietly over the phone.

Eric and his mother came to Ken's house with flowers. It was a Japanese wake and they felt a little out of place. Eric still didn’t know what to say to Ken. He didn’t know how to react when he saw his friend’s ashen face. It was the first time he had ever seen him like that, like all of the home times over the years had gathered together and concentrated in him in one burst.

Saiko was as quiet and reserved as ever, and she bowed a lot that day. She bustled about without giving too much of an indication that her husband had died. She answered questions about her husband’s health in accented English, and about the stroke that finally took his life.

‘Yes, very sudden,’ she would agree. ‘Very sudden.’

When there was a lull and no one seemed to be paying them any attention, Ken and Eric went upstairs. Eric stared at the bare walls of Ken’s room in slight shock. Aside from the books lining the shelves, there was almost no colour there. It didn’t seem to suit him at all.

Ken sat on the bed and passed Eric the new game boy he had gotten the previous week and never had a chance to show him. Eric took it and sat beside him. The sharp, high sounds of the game seemed to be coming from far away.

‘You have to press…’ Ken reached over and showed him how to start. ‘And then press A when you see the —’

‘What’s that?’

‘That’s the thing you have to wait for. Now you press A.’

‘Oh. Cool.’

‘Yeah.’

Eric guided his little avatar through the first level.

‘This is cool.’

‘Yeah,’ Ken said with a small smile. And then, after only a slight pause, ‘I’m glad my father's dead.’

Eric’s gaze veered away from the game boy only enough to look at the side of Ken’s left knee. The words were seamlessly attached onto the end of their conversation about a little animated gorilla charging its way through its electronic world. Eric was too afraid to look at him. If he saw Ken’s face properly, then the words would become real. It would mean that there had always been a big, dark monster hiding under Ken’s bed for years. One which had only just died. It would mean that Eric would have to face something that scared him on many levels, the worst of it being the fact that bad things happened to people who didn’t deserve them. And it would mean he, Eric, was responsible, at least partly, for not having stopped it.

‘Does that make me bad?’ Ken asked.

He was crying. Eric could hear it, even though Ken was doing it quietly. He knew he ought to do something. He knew this was when people — bigger people, better people than him — would fuss and hug and say the right words. But Eric was eleven, and his best friend’s father had just died, and he didn’t know what to do.

‘No,’ Eric replied.

He then noticed the little fox on Ken’s bedside table. He remembered something Ken had told him two years ago.

_Kitsune doesn’t stop bad things from happening. But if he's nearby, I know that it'll be okay._

The room held them in silence, broken by the occasional soft sound; distant voices wafting up from downstairs and the pings on the screen in front of them. Even if a big, dark monster had existed and had lived under Ken’s bed that whole time, it was dead now. It was dead now, and so surely it meant that the bad things would stop.

So Eric kept playing the game that Ken had handed to him.

And Ken, for his part, was just happy to have Eric in his room.

 


	2. ACT TWO

**2004**

The day that Ken’s father died and the quiet words Ken uttered in his bedroom and the awful things they implied — all of it became an anomalous blip in a friendship that otherwise hadn’t changed much since they were in second grade.

By the time they were fourteen, Ken had acquired a reputation. It was one that he didn’t mind in the slightest, and it was one that bothered Eric only when people gave him a hard time about it, or gave Ken a hard time about it in front of him.

The jokes about Ken having a crush on Eric began as nothing more than jokes. They were delivered halfheartedly, often by their own friends. And Ken would laugh it off and Eric would scowl. Roy, who was also on the football team with Eric, would sometimes reach over and ruffle Ken’s hair as he made fun of him.

They liked him well enough. Ken was always happy and full of life, if rather air-headed, and his kindness was second to none. In fact, Ken was the first of them to have a girl outwardly express her interest in him. Teresa Fuller, whose heavy rectangular glasses somehow emphasised her allure, stood before his locker and confidently asked whether he was going with anyone to the Winter Fling. The fact that Ken turned her down became commonly known in a matter of days. He was lorded for it, especially by those like Roy who were both in awe and jealous of the fact that a bookworm who didn’t play sports had managed to attract the interest of someone like Teresa Fuller.

Ken was slender and fair, with eyes that were unusually large and yet also had an Asiatic slant. His hair fell over his forehead in a careless way which the girls found somewhat enchanting. Plus he was the type to go out of his way to pick up a fallen book or hold a door open. And he deflected all good-natured sneers with a good-natured laugh.

‘Hey, Ken-doll!’ Roy teased. ‘Rescue any princesses today? Kiss them awake?’

‘Nah, Eric would clock him if he tried anything while he was asleep,’ their friend Jordan chimed in, eliciting cackles from Roy and smiles from anyone else nearby.

Eric kept eating his lunch without reacting and Ken sat beside him with a slight blush that the others didn't read into. Theirs was a silent bond that everyone could see from afar and one which they respected as much as they ridiculed.

An innocuous comment uttered in a hallway between classes one day changed this simple, familiar dynamic. It began when Roy claimed he had already made it to third base with a girl during spring break, but Jordan just as ardently claimed Roy was full of it. The topic soon shifted to whom they would sleep with if they could pick anyone, whether a celebrity or a real person. Names flitted around, including the new student teacher Mrs Briggs who they agreed had to be a G-cup, at the very least.

When it was Ken’s turn, Roy answered for him. ‘Eric, right?’

A few laughs. And Ken blushed. And he said, ‘Yeah, probably.’

The laughter that followed was a little uncertain, and then it died. Ken was still blushing and his smile was as frank as ever. Eric stopped and turned. So did the other two.

Ken didn’t know exactly why he answered the way he did; whether he was swept up in the joke himself, or whether it had somehow slipped from his grasp and became a truth that others could now see.

‘What — are you serious?’ Roy said, gaping. ‘You’re not _serious?’_

‘I’m — I —’

And when the truth was out, Ken didn’t quite know how to reel it back. And his friends sensed it. Eric sensed it. It was almost a typical air-headed slip from Ken, something that was perfectly in keeping with who he was. But its revelation was something none of them, including Ken, were prepared for.

‘What the fuck, Ken-doll?' Roy spluttered. 'That’s… are you —?’

‘Boys!’ a sharp voice called. They turned to see the principal watching them sternly. ‘Too loud in the hallway. Get to class, now!’

There were two periods left before the end of school. By then, the news had spread.

That day, they had planned to go to Eric's house together to study for their English exam. Eric had always struggled with the subject while Ken excelled. They walked away from the front gates together and the bustle of school was replaced by the gentle drone of traffic. Ken hummed under his breath as they walked, partly out of nervousness. He didn't care what anyone else thought. He only cared what Eric thought.

Eric was one of the tallest boys in their year, taller even than a lot of students in years above them. He was still lanky but with with shoulders and arms that were strengthening from football practice. His hair was sandy; darker than it had been in childhood.

Ken spared a glance at him every now and then. He hoped Eric would say something soon.

After a lengthy silence, Eric finally did.

‘It was a joke, right?’

Another silence fell. His words sounded like they always did. Blunt and unaffected.

Ken hesitated for only a moment.

‘No,’ he said.

Eric processed the information like he always did. Slowly. With gravity. He glanced at Ken. He wondered if he had always suspected. He wondered what it meant.

And he realised he didn't care.

And so he made a small, non-committal sound. Ken heard it and knew what it meant. He felt a wave of gratitude. He knew it meant nothing would change. And he wasn’t naive enough to hope anything would change.

That day, he helped Eric understand the poems they were supposed to be studying. Eric ended up getting a B- which was his best mark yet for English.

And when Eric began dating Alison Lee in the grade above him, Ken didn’t miss a beat. Nothing inside him changed.

* * *

**2007**

It was no longer a secret that Ken was in love with his best friend. The few girls Eric dated over the three years since the inadvertent confession were all aware of it, but Ken’s nature, and the stalwart assurance of Eric’s sexuality, meant it never became an issue for anyone. Ken didn’t mind. He watched Eric’s relationships progress with nothing but goodwill.

They spent weekday afternoons at Eric’s place playing video games. In the six years since Ken’s father died, Eric went to his place as well, though not as often. He didn’t like it in Ken’s room. Everything was still bare and sterile and made him uncomfortable. Being in that room also reminded him of what Ken had said to him on the day of his father’s wake. He didn’t want to imagine whatever it was that Ken had gone through with his father.

‘Shit,’ Eric muttered, glancing at the time. He put down his controller. ‘I haven’t done any of my history homework.’

‘I can do it for you,’ Ken said. He put down his controller as well and stretched his arms above his head as he yawned. They were both leaning against Eric’s bed. The sheets behind Ken smelled like Eric and he inhaled guiltily.

Eric considered the offer.

‘Nah,’ he decided.

It was for the best that Eric’s personality was gruff yet malleable enough to support Ken’s endless doting. Ken would do anything Eric wanted, whatever his mood on any given day, but often Eric couldn’t care less what they did. And so even at seventeen, their friendship remained so, unchanged and solid since childhood.

‘Oh, by the way, I ordered the tickets for _I Am Legend_ for Saturday,’ Ken said.

‘I can’t go,’ Eric said. ‘Remember? I told you last week, coach wants an extra practice this week before the game.’

‘Oh!’ Ken said, the memory coming to him vaguely. He had completely forgotten.

Eric made a noise of impatience. Ken’s absent-mindedness struck often and it never failed to frustrate him.

‘For fuck’s sake, Ken.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I’ll pay you for the ticket.’

‘It’s my fault, you don’t have to —’

‘I’ll pay you for the ticket,’ Eric insisted angrily.

‘Okay,’ Ken said quietly, after a pause.

The tone of his voice inspired a guilty twinge, which was an emotion Eric didn’t like.

‘I have to go to practice,’ he said, his voice still hard. ‘It’s the final game of the season. I need to train.’

‘I know, it's okay. I should have remembered. Sorry.’

Eric stared for a few more seconds before he went to his desk. He opened his history textbook and wondered why he still felt guilty.

‘I think you’ll be really good whether you practice or not,’ Ken said, staring at the broad back that was hunched over the desk. ‘You’re the best one on the team.’

Eric didn’t reply.

As he worked, Ken stretched out on the bed. Saiko was pretty lax with curfews and he could go home at any time. Rebecca had already invited him to stay over for dinner. He felt the beginnings of a migraine.

It didn’t take Eric long to notice. A few minutes later, he thought he heard something slightly forced in Ken’s breathing. He turned to see Ken curled up slightly on the comforter, his brows pulled together.

‘I’m fine,’ Ken said, when he saw Eric had turned around, but it didn’t stop Eric from getting up and going to Ken’s bag. He rifled through it until he found Ken’s medication. He went downstairs for a glass of water and a compress and came back up to see it had worsened.

The day Ken collapsed in fourth grade was grafted to his memory. He took each of Ken’s migraines seriously. Ken held the compress to his head and squeezed his eyes shut. Eric sat before the bed, facing away, idly touching one of the video game controllers. Ken didn’t move for a while but Eric could sense that he was conscious. If it looked like he had passed out, Eric wouldn't hesitate to call an ambulance. So far, however, that time in fourth grade had been an isolated incident.

Around an hour passed before Ken’s breathing seemed less laboured. Eric looked over his shoulder.

‘What Roy said last week…’ he began.

Ken looked at him in surprise. It wasn’t like Eric to bring up anything like that.

The previous week, when Roy thought Eric was out of earshot, he had approached Ken in the hallway where he was talking to a new student — a girl who had recently transferred.

‘Don’t waste your time,’ he said loudly, bumping into Ken hard enough that he fell against the locker. ‘This one’s a fag. He wants to be fucked by the captain of the football team. Don’t you, Ken-doll?’

Ken stared in surprise. The girl, mortified, turned red on his behalf. And then Roy caught sight of Eric, who had seen the whole thing and now glowered at Roy.

Roy faltered for a moment before defiantly regaining his composure. ‘What? It’s true! You’re spending all your time with someone who’s dying to suck your cock.’

Eric didn’t say anything and his expression didn’t change. Roy felt unsure again. For a moment, he even wondered if Eric would take a swing at him. Their friendship was strained already, ever since that day when they were fourteen and Ken had let his secret slip. Roy decided to cut his losses. Eric was bigger than him.

‘Whatever, man.’

Eric glanced at Ken, who seemed more or less unshaken, before he kept going on his way to class, wondering what he should have said or done. It seemed he was forever asking himself that.

On Eric’s bed, Ken moved the compress away and tried to sit up. Eric struggled. As he expected, he didn’t know what to ask next.

_Does he do it all the time? How long has he been doing it? Should I have stopped it?_

He wondered if Ken understood what he was trying to say. Perhaps it wasn’t fair for him to be asking now, when Ken was recovering from what looked like a particularly bad spell.

‘It’s okay,’ Ken said.

It was all he said. Eric knew he ought to ask more. He knew things were in some strange limbo and had been for years, a place that didn’t seem likely or stable, a place that those like Roy were struggling to understand. It was as though the incredulity of it, of Ken’s obvious devotion and the fact that he didn’t care what anyone thought, was keeping everything together in the thinnest membrane. He knew he ought to be doing more than fetching meds and a compress every few months. But the thought made a part of him cringe. It would bring to the fore all the things that they had already dealt with, categorised, labelled, put aside.

So he nodded and got up. He finished his homework and Ken stayed over for dinner.

* * *

**2010**

The thought only crossed Eric’s mind as an idle curiosity. It carried no value whatsoever; no enticement and no disgust. He even watched a gay porn video once, wondering if it was more or less the same as what he knew. And in some ways it was, but in many other ways it wasn’t. He tried to imagine one of them as Ken. And the other as himself. He wondered if that was what Ken wanted; if Ken fantasised similar things. He frowned at the video, feeling next to nothing, and put it away.

How Ken felt for him was simply a part of his reality. And there was nothing either of them could do about it, or wanted to do about it. There were brief stints in high school, including the one involving Roy, when they brushed against banal realities like other people's judgment. During those times, Eric doubted himself and doubted Ken. But once they escaped that small, low-stakes bubble, things fell into place once more.

And Eric began to understand himself better. He realised he used Ken in a way. He enjoyed the quiet attention. The quiet worship. He didn’t understand where it came from and why, and aside from that single foray into gay porn, he didn’t really try to understand where Ken hoped it would go. He couldn’t even be sure if that was, in fact, what Ken wanted. But he could barely remember a life without Ken, and that included the open, selfless adoration that came with it.

Ken read a lot, and he recognised their story, his and Eric’s, in strange places. He saw it in high-school soaps, in gay romances, in a variety of clichés. And yet there were things about their reality that seemed simultaneously more grounded and less real than fiction. He wondered why it didn’t happen more often in the way their story was panning out, where unrequited feelings didn’t equate with copious amounts of pain, which seemed oddly self-entitled. It seemed self-evident, meanwhile, to Ken at least, that the truest feelings were those that didn't require validation or reciprocation.

And as his Kitsune perched on the edge of his table, or rode at the bottom of his bag to university, he felt lucky that the one he wanted had been by his side watching over him, accepting his feelings silently, since he was seven.

Ken lay down on a patch of sunlight beside Eric’s hammock. He stared up at his laptop and increased the screen's brightness. The grass tickled the back of his neck.

They were in the yard behind Eric’s new place which he shared with two roommates. It was a short walk to Eric's university, where he had gotten through on a full sports scholarship. Ken still lived at home and made the trek to a different university on the other side of the city, but he always made time to see Eric.

‘I have to write a tragedy by next week,’ he sighed.

Eric lay in the hammock with his music playing in one ear.

‘What?’

‘I have to write a tragedy in five acts by next week, in under ten thousand words.’

Eric didn’t have much of an idea of how long that was. ‘Sounds hard.’

‘It is. Tragedies need to be long to be real tragedies. I don’t think I can make it sad in only ten thousand words. Realistically sad, anyway.’ He sighed and stared at the characters that didn’t seem to want to become three-dimensional. ‘Plus having to do it in five acts is hard.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘Remember Shakespeare? Rising action and falling action and stuff.’

‘Ugh,’ Eric assessed.

Ken grinned. Eric and Shakespeare had never once gotten along. And Eric for the life of him couldn’t understand why Ken would want to keep torturing himself with that kind of thing even after high school.

He spared a glance down at Ken, who lay back with his laptop propped up against his knees. He seemed thinner in those days. Perhaps it was Eric’s imagination. The contents of Ken’s bag had spilled a little on the grass beside him. Eric spied a familiar orange hide.

Eric hesitated. He knew it was the right time, on the heels of whatever Ken had been saying about his writing assignment, to confess to a little research he had done recently regarding the multiple-tailed spirit that had been by Ken’s side ever since Eric could remember. He didn’t even know what had prompted his Google search but suddenly he was flicking through images of narrow-faced creatures with sly eyes and beautiful curling tails and even reading about the lore that birthed them. One particular story had stayed with him.

It was about a fox spirit who took the form of a woman, as they often do, and married a human man. The man's dog, driven by instinct presumably, wanted to kill her. But thanks to a kind of obstinacy that Eric both empathised with and grew frustrated over, the man refused to get rid of his dog no matter how much she pleaded. Eventually, out of fear, the woman turned back into a fox and fled. And the man was left to regret his inaction, his inability to keep her safe, for the rest of his life.

Eric opened his mouth to tell Ken about this strange story, and just to show off the fact that he had bothered to do any kind of research into the only snippet of Japanese culture that possibly meant something to Ken. But for whatever reason, Eric kept silent. They both absorbed the warm peace of that afternoon. Ken’s fingers tapped away on the keyboard. Eric quite enjoyed the sound.

Pretty soon, thoughts of fox spirits were replaced by thoughts of his girlfriend, Clare, and the fact that he would be seeing her after her final exam that night. It was the first time he had seen her in two weeks and he hoped that meant what he hoped it meant.

‘I’m seeing someone,’ Ken said suddenly.

Eric glanced down. Ken looked like he was avoiding his eye.

‘Seeing someone?’

Ken nodded.

‘What do you mean, like seeing a girl?’

Ken hesitated. ‘Not a girl.’

Eric stared, aware that he was about to frown. The frown he used when things didn’t make sense.

‘His name’s Adam. He’s my — he’s one of the lecturers in my university. I was in his class last year but I’m not his student anymore, so…’

The words were simple and bare but Eric was still struggling to understand them. And Ken, his ears red, was struggling to make it through a question — a speech, really — which he had mentally rehearsed time and time again.

‘Do you… I mean… do you want to meet him? Maybe? You don’t have to. I was just thinking — but it’s weird. You don’t have to.’

Eric’s mind flashed back to the day years ago when he had tried to venture into an illicit world that he thought might be Ken’s but which seemed jarring and unreal at the time. The thought that Ken was now, possibly, living in that world made him want to know exactly what they did, how often, how many times, whether it really was a part of his life.

At the same time, Eric knew he would rather die than know the answer to any of those questions. And he knew the raw, incredibly visceral jealousy he was feeling then had nothing to do with anything and could only be put down to reasons of pettiness and possibly even a strange form of homophobia.

With half-hearted and half-minded rationales like that, he finally said, ‘Yeah, whatever.’

Ken looked up. ‘Really?’

Eric shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’

Ken smiled. He was relieved and strangely sad, nostalgic almost, at the same time. It felt as though they were about to leave something behind.

‘Okay.’

 


	3. ACT THREE

Eric and Adam disliked each other almost immediately. Eric could sense that Adam was looking down on him in the way that those in the world of academia sometimes looked down on those who weren't, particularly those who were seventeen years younger than they were. And Adam Burgess, meanwhile, could sense a certain alpha-male dislike coming from the best friend whom he had heard about for months, which made him come to a few astute conclusions.

Ken held onto his coffee mug and tried to fight his nerves. He managed to keep his voice as upbeat and animated as ever, and Adam's pleasant, earthy repartee complemented it perfectly. But Eric rarely joined in, despite how often Ken tried to rope him into the conversation. He sat low in his seat and sometimes even stared pointedly out the window.

Adam was vaguely amused.

He was thirty-seven and an associate professor of English literature at the university. He had a long, handsome face and gentle eyes that were a mossy green shade which struck Ken when he first saw them.

Ken had approached Adam at the end of their first class to ask a question about Wilde and they continued their conversation over coffee. Ken had always liked Adam as a teacher and always enjoyed their discussions over that semester, and he didn’t think much of it when Adam asked him to dinner when final exams were over. He had never given their relationship any real thought beyond intriguing debates about Wilde's theories on art and morality. Which is why it caught him entirely off guard that night, after dinner, when Adam suddenly pulled him close and kissed him. Behind them, the cab waited with an open door.

Ken didn’t understand what was happening at first. He had envisioned being kissed hundreds of times, thousands perhaps, but his fantasies had been dominated exclusively by one person. And so it felt entirely alien; the fact that it was someone else, the unexpected warmth and rubberiness of lips. He pulled back and blinked.

‘I’ll call you,’ Adam said, taking Ken’s shock in stride. He had smiled and gotten in the cab and Ken had stared after it, his lips tingling and his pulse only then beginning to pick up.

He wondered if that was what kissing was, the thing that everyone around him had done for so long, which had taken him twenty years to do; twenty years because despite everything his father had done, he had never once kissed him. He wondered if that was what it was like each time Eric kissed a girl.

And he still thought of Eric the next time Adam kissed him, at the doorway to Adam’s apartment. He thought of Eric when Adam carefully took his clothes off and told him to lie back. He did so uncertainly, grateful that Adam didn’t think any less of him for being so inexperienced. And he thought of Eric again when Adam hovered over him.

In fact, he thought of Eric right until the moment Adam pushed into his body. But when that happened, thoughts of Eric suddenly went away. It was so different from anything Ken had imagined, or fantasised, or done to himself over the years. It was incomparable; the sense that another human being’s heat was now inside him, that his body was making room for it. Most importantly, it felt completely different from anything his father had done to him, even though it was the same act. He let out a moan he didn’t know he was capable of and reached up to wrap his arms around Adam’s neck.

Adam felt something too in the way Ken looked at him then, and he remembered it for years. Each time he did what he did, it was to get Ken to look at him that way again, to remind Ken that Adam was the one who had taken him, the one who was with him now, the one to whom Ken would cling.

He bore that in mind when he met Eric and came face-to-face with Eric’s surliness and obvious jealousy. Jealousy that wasn’t necessarily romantic or sexual in nature but was certainly dominant. But Adam had a good idea of how to deal with it.

When Ken went to the bathroom, Adam smiled benignly at Eric who stared evenly back.

‘Eric, have you heard of the _Dog in the Manger,_ by any chance?’ he asked.

‘The what?’ Eric said, with a faint frown, aware he was being condescended to.

‘An old Greek fable. It’s about a dog who jealously guards the grains and vegetables in a manger, stopping the horse from eating them, even though the dog doesn’t eat them himself.’

Eric needed a few seconds, but at length, the meaning of Adam's words became abundantly clear. He glared incredulously.

‘I can understand that having someone like Ken near you has been good for your ego all these years,’ Adam continued lightly, his tone almost playful; a tone that could, at any time, hide behind the claim that he had merely been having a good joke at Eric's expense. ‘But I think it’s time you let him go, don’t you?’

Eric’s ears burned with the man’s casual tone, the arrogance of the insinuation and, above all, its undeniable truth. He didn’t gather his thoughts in time to come up with a response. Ken returned then, still looking nervous.

And he was nervous when he spoke to Eric alone a few days later. He had been mulling it over in those few days and had come to a decision.

‘If you don’t like him, I won’t see him anymore.’

His voice was quiet but firm. It had only been a few months since he had started seeing Adam. And if Eric didn’t approve, in any way, Ken would find some excuse to call it off.

Eric only had to look at him to realise he meant it.

 _Have you heard of the Dog in the Manger_ _by any chance?_

He let out a sigh of frustration that was abrupt enough to startle Ken.

'Don’t... do that.’

Ken watched him anxiously.

‘Just do what you want, okay?’ Eric didn’t know how to soften his voice, even though he knew he should. ‘I don’t care what you do.’

Ken’s heart fell. He knew that was the case, but for some reason, and for the first time, it hurt him to hear it said so bluntly.

Eric scratched his shoulder uneasily. ‘That’s not what I —’ He tried again. ‘You don’t tell me who to date. Right? So, you know. Whatever.’ He paused and fiddled with the joystick on his controller. Behind him, his two housemates were loudly goofing around in the kitchen. ‘You two probably talk about Shakespeare all day or whatever,’ he muttered, suddenly self-conscious of himself and his lifestyle for the very first time.

Ken gave a tentative smile. Their avatars were paused on the screen, waiting for them to resolve something that felt like they were treading on broken glass.

‘Sort of,’ he admitted.

Eric didn’t like the surge of frustration he felt over Ken’s smile and his little confession. He imagined them lying in bed, Adam smiling smugly as he soliloquised and Ken hanging off his every word.

He couldn’t help feeling as though Ken had done wrong by him. It felt strange that he should be left in the lurch, trying to catch up. It made it seem as though Ken had his own life, away from Eric’s. A life to which Eric no longer had access. There were times when Eric caught himself wanting to know exactly when it was that Ken had stopped feeling _that_ way about him. Hadn’t they made the implicit agreement that Ken would always secretly long for Eric? Hadn't that arrangement worked for them for so long?

The dog in the manger, he told himself. That’s all it was. It was time to let the horse eat the grain, or whatever the fuck it was that that self-righteous bastard had insinuated.

After Ken left that day, Eric checked his phone and saw that Clare had called him four times.

* * *

 ******2013**

Three years passed so slowly that they seemed to be making up for the way time flew by in childhood. There was a certain sluggishness to the way university became the real world for Ken, who had abandoned thoughts of pursuing a master's degree and was now a student teacher at a local elementary school, and for Eric who realised his business degree was going nowhere and decided to drop out. His part-time job at the fire station became his real passion and he channelled his energy towards becoming a full-time firefighter. He passed the Physical Aptitude Test with flying colours and was gearing up for his first written exam in a few months.

One day, he heard a faint rap on his door and opened it to see Ken standing there looking slightly sheepish.

‘You have a key,’ Eric pointed out.

‘I lost it,’ Ken said with an apologetic smile.

Eric sighed, more out of weathered familiarity than real irritation.

‘I have to go,’ he said, though he stood aside to let Ken in. ‘They called me in for another shift.’

‘Can I stay anyway? I’ll just sleep on the couch.’

Eric peered at him. ‘You feeling okay?’

‘Yeah. I'm just… a little tired.’

‘Sure, whatever. I’ll be back at eight, I think.’

‘I’ll be gone by then. I’m having dinner with Adam.’

Eric grunted and grabbed his jacket. Ken gave him a wave as he left the apartment.

In the hallway on the other side of the door, Eric hesitated for a moment. Over the past three years, he had forced himself to ignore all the little things that didn’t seem right. Some distant intuitive voice was telling him something. But he didn’t trust himself or that intuition anymore. If any sense of foreboding still lingered, he knew it owed to his own misplaced selfishness and protective jealousy and simple dislike of Adam. So he shoved his hands in his pockets and headed for the elevator.

When left alone, Ken took a deep breath. It was cold inside the apartment. Eric lived by himself; his part-time work coupled with allowances from his parents was enough for him to afford his own studio in the heart of the city, where he had been living for almost two years; the same amount of time that Ken had been living with Adam. He had lost Kitsune during the move.

Traffic could be heard through the half-open window, which Ken closed slowly with his left hand. He switched on the radiator and glanced at the throw rug on the couch. He instead went to Eric’s bed, gingerly picked up the blanket, again with his left hand, and wrapped himself in it before going back to the couch.

He sank into its depths and closed his eyes, willing the pain to leave his body. He was safe there. It was the safest place in the world, even when Eric wasn’t there. It was the same feeling he had back when he was seven years old and he had been invited to spend the night at Eric’s house for the first time.

There were three hours before he would have to go back to Adam’s place and get ready for dinner. They were meeting with two of Adam’s colleagues, one of whom had recently had a book published, and Ken wasn’t looking forward to it at all. He could already imagine the affected, self-congratulatory conversation that would swallow up the entire evening. He hoped he would be able to do well enough, despite his feelings.

Adam took pride in Ken and showed him off to his friends and peers whenever he could. They were aware of Adam's sexuality, something for which he was rather admired in that small world, and Ken was a prize. He was bright and enthusiastic and spoke passionately about his favourite works with an idealism that was misleading — it morphed without warning into an insightful understanding of the artist's darker motivations. On top of all that, he was young and beautiful.

His air-headedness and forgetfulness, however, Adam couldn’t stand. Each time Ken forgot things — old conversations, events, pin-codes and passwords — Adam would make a sound that reminded Ken of Eric and grow quite frustrated. Ken would apologise each time.

The first time Adam hit Ken also owed, in part, to Ken’s absent-mindedness. It happened a year after they started dating, only a few weeks after Ken left his childhood home for the first time and moved in with him. Ken had spent the day with Eric and completely forgot a staff dinner that Adam wanted him to come to. His phone was out of battery and Adam had no way of reaching him. That, combined with the fact that Ken had been with Eric, combined with the drinks that Adam had had that evening, all came to a head that evening when Ken returned home and began apologising. Adam made a noise of disgust before turning to go to bed. Ken was crestfallen.

Then Adam turned back as though having changed his mind, and Ken’s spirits lifted. The backhand came as a streak of colour more than an act. In fact, it was more out of surprise than physical force that he stumbled back a step.

‘If I had known it would be like being with a child, I wouldn’t have bothered with you a year ago,’ Adam said, his voice the same as it always was. Gentle and smooth, with only the slightest cold edge.

‘I’m sorry,’ Ken said automatically, cheek and jaw stinging.

In that moment, Adam relished the look that Ken gave him. It was the same look he had in his eyes when Adam took his virginity, or at least, the moment he thought he did. It was like a shot of some kind of drug.

But his hand was stinging and something compelled him to leave the apartment for a while, despite how late it was. Ken went to bed and waited. He had been catapulted straight back into his youth. He knew, without Adam needing to tell him, that this was something he couldn’t tell anyone about. He knew because his father had already told him the consequences if he told anyone. Besides that, he knew it was his fault anyway, and that he had to try to be better.

Adam returned and slipped into bed. Ken stiffened. But Adam only breathed out, long and loud, and pulled Ken close and went to sleep.

It happened again a few weeks later. And then again a month after that. Each time, whenever Ken stared at Adam with that look in his eyes, it would stay with Adam, and inspire him the next time he was taken over by anger.

But he also always tried to make sure there was never a mark on him where it could be seen in public. He still took Ken with him to museum exhibits, dinners, alumni events.

Ken knew, with a stoicism that had waited years to find him again, where it was going. And it began the following year. That time, Ken had fallen to the floor and Adam told him to get back up. When Ken struggled to do so, because he was still winded from the last blow, Adam took a fistful of his hair.

‘Take off your clothes. All of them.’

As it happened, Ken grit his teeth. His tears leaked like they had done once, and it all made sense again, it came full circle. It was the same thing he had experienced as a child. The monster under his bed hadn’t died. It had lain in wait. And now he didn’t even have Kitsune to protect him.

Those were times that Ken remembered all of his failures. He had been weak from the beginning. His father had always seen it in him and told him. People at school had seen it. Even Eric must see it, even if he only showed it when he was annoyed. It was a miracle Ken even had a job, or that he had a degree. He sometimes thought about the only assignment he had ever failed; the five-act tragedy. He had toiled over it for a long time and in the end his final product was twice the word limit. He had been overwhelmed and ended up not handing anything in. The professor had given him a pass for the course out of pity, because he knew Ken’s aptitude for the subject, but Ken assumed his pass had been a fluke or oversight of some kind. It all reinforced the fact that he was simply not good enough for the world. He was lucky to have Eric. He was lucky to have Adam. Either or both of them could leave him at any moment. Even Kitsune had left him.

And so he lay wrapped in Eric’s blanket on Eric’s couch, knowing that in a few hours he would have to get up and return to the flat he shared with Adam.

In his pocket was the key to Eric’s flat. He had never lost it, but he couldn’t use it. Eric’s front door lock was tricky and needed a firm grip on the handle at the same time as the key was being turned. Last night, Adam had been angry again. And now, Ken’s right hand wasn’t working properly. It was only a mild sprain and a very slight bruise to go with it. But he couldn’t clutch things, and probably wouldn’t be able to for several days. He hoped he would be able to use the cutlery properly at the restaurant. If he embarrassed Adam in front of his colleagues, he didn’t know what might happen.

Over the past two years since it began happening, Ken would go to Eric’s whenever he could; if Eric didn't have his girlfriend over, and if the bruises weren’t obvious. They would sit around Eric’s place in silence, or play video games like they were still teenagers. Ken would tell him stories and sometimes even laugh at himself like he used to, and sometimes, very occasionally, he would even get Eric to smile. Often he would simply lie on that couch and hear Eric moving about the apartment and he would close his eyes and tell himself everything was fine.

A selfish thought flashed across his mind for a moment. He suddenly wished he had lied and told Eric he was feeling the onsets of a migraine. If that was the case, there was a chance Eric would have cancelled his shift and stayed to look after him.

The thought only lasted a moment.

He wondered where his Kitsune had gone.

* * *

**2015**

There were a few specific things that Adam and Eric had in common, which Ken noticed. They both hated Ken’s absent-mindedness. And they also had a strange soft spot for Ken’s migraines.

Adam always fussed over him whenever he looked like he was going through another bad spell. He likened it to Achilles’ heel or Desdemona’s handkerchief — a weakness worthy of literature. Ken would smile and sip the water Adam brought for him. In moments like that, Ken would lie with his head in Adam’s lap and Adam would stroke his hair gently, which was something no one had ever done for him. Adam would even sometimes tut at the bruises on his arms and wrists, and they would seem, to Ken, as though they came from far away, from an old life, and from someone else’s hand.

But that illusion was fleeting, because before Ken knew it was only a matter of time — weeks or months — and there would be more bruises and there would be times when he pleaded but Adam didn’t stop and there would even be times when he passed out from the pain.

And there was one fateful time when Adam wasn’t as considerate about one particular migraine. It started before Adam came home from work, and he came home from work in a foul mood. And when Ken tried to appeal to him on the basis of his headache, it worked in reverse. Adam felt nothing but disgust. It had been five years, and that evening saw a culmination of everything — things that had started small, with a sigh of annoyance at Ken’s mistakes, a single strike across the face, sex that was too rough, anger that escalated. It was incremental, cumulative, until it was unrecognisable from the day Adam had kissed Ken in front of a waiting cab.

Ken didn’t wake up that day.

Eric only found out he was Ken’s emergency contact when the hospital called him. He left work early, feeling something begin to crawl under his skin. He felt like he was on the precipice of something. Something he had refused to see for years. He had forced himself to ignore all the things that seemed wrong because he didn’t trust that distant, intuitive voice which was now loud in his ears. They hadn’t been able to tell him too many details over the phone. All they had said was that he was critical but stable. But Eric knew.

He stared at Ken through the hallway window in the hospital. He was suddenly nine years old again, clutching Ken’s school bag where Kitsune was clipped, staring at the breathing tube coming out of Ken’s nose. Except now it was an oxygen mask and bandages barely concealing a host of bruises that made Eric feel sick. Ken's eyes were swollen and his jaw patchy with various colours. His left wrist was wrapped in gauze and his right arm was in a cast.

The doctor told him he had fallen backwards against something sharp and suffered massive blood loss and that it was touch and go at the moment, though they had done everything they could. Eric confirmed, quietly, that Ken no longer had relatives in the country, since his mother returned to Japan.

Two policemen were there, the ones who had responded to the neighbour’s phone call about a domestic disturbance, and the questions they asked Eric regarding Ken’s relationship with Adam Burgess were enough for that distant, intuitive voice in Eric’s head to be completely vindicated.

For the next day, Eric waited for Ken to wake up. He sat in the armchair by the bed and dozed and dreamed of three-tailed foxes who flitted about him like pixies, sometimes caressing his face with long, soft fingers topped by claws, other times accusing him of various things, things he had done, things he hadn’t done, the dog he refused to kill, the dog he had been, grains and vegetables, mangers. He thought of the kid who followed him around the school playground, telling him about a dog with yellow hair whose name should have been Eric.

When Ken awoke, the first thing he saw was his little Kitsune on the bedside table beside a large handmade bouquet of flowers that the students of his class had put together out of bright crepe paper and pipe cleaners.

Eric had found Kitsune almost a year ago at the bottom of one of his bags. He had no idea how the decades-old toy had ended up with him, beyond a vague memory of the day Ken had helped him move into his apartment. He had placed the toy in a drawer and, for the next year, he kept consistently forgetting to tell Ken about it. The memory of the day Ken had fainted in fourth grade, and his theory about the reason he had been protected all along, had finally prompted Eric to take out Ken's guardian spirit and place it where it belonged.

Ken then saw Eric asleep in the chair.

In that moment, despite Eric's huge shoulder span and the size of his body, he somehow seemed much younger than twenty-five. The slight scowl he wore in sleep, the sandy unkempt hair and the vaguely petulant way he sat low in his chair with his arms folded made Ken recall, simultaneously, all the years in which he had known him, and all the years of simple longing.

His body was just pain in various shades and in various places. He felt like a living antenna that was designed to absorb and retain as much of it as possible. But seeing his Kitsune and seeing Eric was enough for him to remember. Kitsune was never able to stop the bad things from happening. But the fact that Kitsune was there — the fact that Eric was there — was enough. It meant that everything would be okay.

And Eric, meanwhile, was just taking his leave of the fox spirit, the woman with the long, soft fingers and sharp claws. Or rather, the spirit was urging him back to consciousness, saying that things would be a lot clearer from that point on.

And when he awoke, and saw that Ken was awake, he realised she was right.

 


	4. ACT FOUR

**2016**

_Does he do it all the time? How long has he been doing it? Should I have stopped it?_

Questions he hadn’t been able to ask Ken in high school, back when all he had seen was Ken being bumped into a locker. It seemed to come back around with a vengeance when Ken winced as he sat up in bed at the hospital, struggled to feed himself, struggled to walk. Eric hated that Ken didn’t seem sure of anything. He hated that Ken's gaze was always unfocused.

And he hated that Ken couldn't be touched anymore. Whether it was the nurses or doctors or even Eric himself, Ken would instinctively pull away from their touch, as though human contact was an affront that his body could no longer abide.

At first, they put it down to his injuries. But it was still the same now, almost eight months later when he was completely healed. If Eric bumped into him in the kitchen or in the living room, Ken would shrink away and Eric would be left feeling grisly. Almost always, it was followed by Ken either avoiding his eye or looking at him apologetically, as though it was yet another thing he couldn’t control.

Eric found only one way to deal with it.

When he found out that Ken wasn’t going to press charges, and that there was nothing the police could do if Ken refused to do so, he got angry at Ken. He swelled up until Ken felt like he was filling the entire apartment, and it made him shrink. Eric saw this just in time. He tried to calm down, and he even managed an apology.

And when Ken fell asleep, Eric stared at the window on the far side of the apartment above his bed. It was the kind that needed to be propped up by something in order to stay open. He went to it, removed the rusting bit of pipe that he had been using to do the job, and left the apartment.

Adam was Ken’s father. He was Roy. He was the dog who wanted to kill the fox spirit. He was Eric himself. And Eric wouldn’t wait, this time, to regret a life of inaction.

In the end, it didn’t happen with the kind of retribution that those like Adam would feel was worthy of literature. There was no real catharsis, no real vindication. All that happened was typical of what would happen if a man with a steel pipe came in through the doors of a lecture hall, making a beeline for the lecturer. Adam was talking with a group of students who had stayed behind to speak to him, like Ken once did. All of them turned and Adam recognised him. They all saw the way he walked; the speed and the glint in his eye. Some of the students backed away, as did Adam, but a few of them lunged forward to try to stop him. Eric only got in a single good swing, which hit Adam somewhere in the shoulder or collarbone, he wasn’t sure which, and it made a satisfying sound. The look of fear in Adam's eyes was even better. But by then, two of the students were holding him back and a third managed to wrench the pipe out of his hand.

‘You’re fucking _dead,_ you hear me? I’ll find you wherever the hell you go! You’re _dead!’_

Adam fled and Eric's words echoed.

It was bad luck for Eric that security didn’t take long to get there. He was hauled off first by them, and then by the police.

But as he sat there in a dank little cell with a few others, he found himself thinking of strange things. He remembered how he felt the day Ken woke up in hospital the previous year, and the awkward guilt he felt when Ken agreed to move in with him for the time being, since he had nowhere else to say, and how he felt, now, each time Ken shrank away from his touch. It was clearer now, just as the fox spirit said, but it didn’t make it easy to deal with. He tried not to remember Ken as the trusting, wide-eyed kid he had once been. The cell smelled like cigarettes.

His luck finally turned after that. One of the captains in that precinct was good friends with Eric’s boss over at the fire station, who vouched for him quite fiercely. And when pressed, Eric reluctantly told them what had happened; everything that the English professor had done to his best friend, and that his best friend was too battered to press charges. They sighed and let him off with a warning.

Ken never learned about any of it. He heard in passing that Adam Burgess had quit in the middle of semester and there were strange rumours about why he did so. But the full picture never came to him.

He also didn’t understand the looks Eric sometimes cast his way, nor the hastily averted glances, nor the voice that was softer than usual and then overly gruff as though to make up for it. He chalked it up to pity, and perhaps annoyance that Ken had stayed with him for so long.

Sometimes the comfort of Eric, his couch and his apartment wasn't enough to keep the nightmares at bay. Nightmares that came from his first memories as a child. His father’s hands. The smell of his breath. The fear that pressed into Ken's chest like a fist at the close of every school day. The silent prayers that his father was in a good mood, because when he was in a good mood he was almost kind, and he took Ken out for fairy floss and milkshakes. But when he wasn’t, when Ken was asked to come into his study, or if Ken wanted something, like if he wanted to sleepover at Eric’s that weekend, then there were things that happened. Things that had to happen.

And so he curled up on Eric’s couch, hoping he had finally done enough to be allowed to stay there, where he felt safe, for as long as he wanted.

But he knew it was time that he stepped out into the real world again, no matter how convinced he was that the world was concealing things, the same things, the same mistakes, in every shadow, and no matter how sure he was that he would stumble into one of them sooner or later. There were new mistakes he was making now. Each touch — whether from Eric or the physical therapist or being jostled by a student at school or a stranger on the street — was his father, or Adam, and his body would coil away without his permission. He didn’t know what to make of it, only that he wished it would stop.

His migraines had grown worse over the years. When he spoke to the doctor about it to get his prescription renewed, the doctor cautiously asked about his family history and warned him about what it might mean. Ken nodded in silence. He didn’t have the heart to tell the doctor that his condition wasn't necessarily degenerative, and that there had been aggravating factors over the past few years that may have contributed to its severity. And so he decided on his own that there was now, perhaps, a slim chance that he might get better.

He recovered from another one a few days later and saw Eric sitting on the floor against the couch, like he used to do back when they were in high school.

Eric looked over his shoulder. ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Here…’

Eric reached out, cautiously, to take the now-warm compress from Ken’s head. He accidentally brushed Ken’s temple. But Ken didn’t flinch, then. Perhaps he was too tired to notice; his gaze was slightly vacant.

He was still thin. His hair was too long, his face was paler than usual and his eyes were very slightly sunken. But it came to Eric then; all the loose fragments of feelings, like thin curtains catching on the wind, finally coming together and delivering the truth to him in a clean, clear picture he had been trying not to see. He imagined it, fully. He imagined Ken looking at him, saying something like, _‘If it’s you, I don’t mind.’_ And he imagined the warmth of Ken's skin, perhaps cool to the touch at first, and it sent a flare throughout his whole body. He set his jaw and turned away.

‘I’m sorry I've been here for so long,’ Ken began. ‘I was thinking of moving out. Soon.’

‘Okay,’ Eric said, without thinking.

There was a small pause.

‘How come Clare hasn’t been coming here?’

‘She broke up with me.’

‘Oh. I'm sorry.’

Eric sighed in annoyance. ‘Stop apologising for every fucking thing.’

Ken blinked in surprise. He had to rein in his instinctive apology.

Eric scuffed the hair on the back of his head and tried his hand at a white lie. ‘Not like it was your fault.’

Clare had seen it — something that it took Eric weeks longer to properly see. She had been with Eric for over six years and she knew him well. She knew about his brush with the police, and she knew there was something about the way Eric cared for his best friend, the way he had almost thrown his entire future away, that she couldn’t ignore any longer.

And now Eric struggled with it alone. He struggled now, yet again, with a simple request. All he had to do was tell Ken not to move out.  

He didn’t know or care why it had taken him so long — almost twenty years. He did have the presence of mind to regret all the years that he had had Ken, back when Ken had been willing, back when Ken had bravely and unabashedly told him how he felt. Now here Eric was, unable to even ask Ken to stay. He was dumbstruck at his own cowardice. He tried to get his mouth to move.

‘How’s studying going?’ Ken asked, cutting into his thoughts.

Eric needed a second to shift gears. He was disappointed and relieved at the same time.

‘It’s okay. It’s pretty easy. Only a few problem situations are hard. Like what to do when civilians don’t co-operate in dangerous situations and stuff.’

Ken tried to imagine it. ‘That does sound hard.’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’ll ace it.’

Eric grunted. ‘Just because you aced everything.’

‘I didn’t.’ Ken found himself remembering something that was irrelevant and insignificant but managed to poke into him like a small thorn. ‘I failed my five-act tragedy.’

It rang a distant bell. A sunny backyard, a hammock and the sound of Ken’s fingers on the keyboard. A time that had made sense.

‘How come?’

‘I can’t write tragedies. I tried but it was too long so I didn’t hand it in.’

‘Why is too long a bad thing?’ Eric asked, drawing his brows together at the thought.

Ken managed a small smile at the frankness of the question.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said, considering it for the first time. ‘I think it was to help us learn how to be concise.’

‘What’s the point of that?’ Eric said, deciding that it was definitely stupid. ‘If people want to read short things, they can fuck off.’

Ken was touched by the sincerity of the simple argument, and the fact that it was made on his behalf.

And Eric saw Ken's smile for the first time in a long time and wanted, suddenly, to keep it there. He hesitated.

‘What — uh — what was it about?’

‘The story?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Oh. Um. A man who meets someone. A woman. A beautiful one, the woman I mean —’

As Ken recounted the story, disjointedly at first, he was surprised to see that Eric seemed genuinely interested. And so Ken fell back into it; the little story he had invented and painted behind his eyelids all those years ago.

‘I think,’ he said at length, ‘I wanted their story to sound familiar.’

‘Familiar?’

‘Like it borrowed from parts of... all other stories. Modern ones and ancient ones, you know.’ Ken was thinking, in particular, of one of the tales of the fox spirits. But he didn’t want to bore Eric with details of Japanese folklore. ‘But with an ending that came out of nowhere. But... I focused too much on all that — stuff that was irrelevant — and it became too long. And I didn’t know how to make it shorter. So I didn’t hand it in.’

He realised then that his five-act tragedy had been due during a time when he had seen a lot of Adam. He remembered that time of his life as though he was only just starting to be pulled beneath the surface. He remembered feeling vaguely disoriented. Lost. But he didn’t recognise it as something to be worried about, at the time.

‘It's good,’ Eric said thoughtfully. ‘The story.’

He didn’t mention that he didn’t like the sound of the ending. It was even worse than the ending of the Kitsune story he had researched himself years ago. But he suspected that his aversion to it came from his own lack of understanding.

For Ken, it was almost jarring, hearing such words from Eric. And it was jarring that they should come to him like a compass needle pointing north, when Adam made the needle careen in every direction.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

And when Eric was overcome by the urge to kiss him, he instead got up and went to the kitchen to make some coffee. He leaned his forehead on one of the overhead cupboards and counted to ten.

Despite all that, he was pleased when Ken’s mood seemed to lift for the first time in months. Behind him, Ken got up and moved to the stereo and fumbled with the phone jack. Eric recognised the track that played. It was one of Ken’s stupid Indie cover bands that Eric never usually had the patience for.

 _From this valley, they say you are going_ _  
_ _We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile_

But this time, he felt a tightness in his chest.  
  
_For they say you are taking the sunshine_  
_That has brightened the pathways awhile._

* * *

******2017**

Ken tried to remember a time when Eric had gone so long without a girlfriend. It had been over a year since Clare broke up with him. He supposed Eric was seeing girls casually and just not telling him about it, which he could understand. After a six-year relationship it made sense that Eric wouldn’t rush into anything.

He had a strange dream one day. He dreamed that he was at Eric’s wedding, which was something he had imagined many times in the past. An eventuality he had steeled himself for, an eventuality he even guiltily hoped for, because it meant that Eric was still in his life. The face of Eric's bride was vague, though for some reason it carried hints of Rebecca, which, in the dream, made perfect sense. 

But suddenly he was following Eric somewhere, and they weren’t in the wedding hall anymore, nor at the reception. They were in Eric’s room in his old house. A few action figures littered the floor, dinosaurs with movable limbs. There in the corner was the bin that was tipped over when Ken toppled from the bed. It was all exactly the same as when they had been seven, except for the fact that they were both adults, and that they had just come from Eric’s wedding. Eric took off his jet-black suit slowly, with a sort of detachment that hinted that he did it every night, and lay back on the bed. His cock was huge, bigger than it had any right to be, and it was standing upright, shining in the dim light from the bedside lamp.

And Ken swung a leg over Eric's hips, hands braced on his shoulders, and lowered himself onto Eric’s cock, and it fit without any problem, with a tightness that ached with pleasure, and Eric watched him evenly, eyes half-lidded.

Ken awoke with a painful erection for the first time in a long time. It had been a while since he had felt any kind of sexual desire, and an even longer time since he had had such an explicit dream about Eric. He guiltily finished himself off, wishing he was still back in Eric’s apartment where Eric's smell lingered on the couch and the sheets.

His new apartment was large and empty. He had a lot saved up over the rent-free year that he had spent at Eric’s. It was close to the school where he worked and in a safe neighbourhood. There were state-of-the-art bolts and locks on his door, which reassured him if he ever awoke from a nightmare. It was close to the doctor he had been going to for years to renew his prescriptions. The only downside to the apartment was that it was the furthest he had ever been from Eric, who was on the other side of the city.

As he made coffee, he realised that it had been twenty years since that first day he slept over on the floor of Eric’s room in a sleeping bag, clutching Kitsune in his right hand. At twenty-seven, Kitsune was still on his nightstand and Ken was clutching memories that were two decades old. He imagined Eric’s scowl of annoyance if he ever told him that he sometimes thought about that first sleepover. The thought made him smile to himself.

At that moment, Eric flung his phone across the bed angrily, where it clattered to the floor and accidentally triggered the un-pause button. He was forced to hear the video through to the awkward, sputtering end where both actors came, either into or on top of the other.

He had already come long before then. He only had to imagine Ken saying, _‘It’s okay if it’s you.’_

He sighed in frustration and got up to dress for work.

Ken took it as a sign that he met Johann on the same day that he had felt a flicker of sexual desire for the first time. As the stranger helped Ken gather his papers together off the floor of the subway platform where his briefcase had fallen and sprung open, Ken saw a gruff, silent chivalry that reminded him of Eric. He stared guiltily as the man walked away. And he was surprised when the man turned back around, ears flaming, to ask Ken for his number.

He mulled it over at work all day. His students sometimes had to call his name twice before he focused on them. And still he had no idea what to do.

With nowhere else to turn, he called Eric. When Eric picked up and Ken heard his voice, he flashed back suddenly and vividly to his dream that morning. He flushed red and was silent for some time before he spoke.

Eric lifted his eyebrows and waited.

‘Someone — someone wants to go to dinner with me. Tonight.’

Eric’s ears rang. ‘Oh,’ he managed.

‘Should I go?’ Ken asked. He didn’t what else to ask. He didn’t know why it sounded like he was asking permission to try again, even though he knew he shouldn’t try. Was two years long enough? Was any length of time enough to forget something like Adam?

Eric held back his instinctive answer. Instead, he carefully said, ‘Do you want to?’

Ken paced. He ran a hand through his hair and back, flattening it low over his forehead.

‘I think so. I don’t know.’

Eric fought hard. He squeezed his eyes shut and counted to ten in the long silence. His train of thought was similar to Ken’s in that moment. He realised it had been two years. And he had to swallow his fiery jealousy at the thought of someone else being with Ken. He had to swallow his sudden anger at Ken for considering someone else, someone other than him, for the second time. He tried to hold onto the notes of hope he heard in Ken’s voice. Surely it was his job to bring those out. To encourage hope. To tell Ken that there was nothing to fear.

‘I’m…’ Ken smiled at the ceiling, eyebrows arched at his own patheticness. ‘I think I’m scared.’

Eric grit his teeth again. ‘It’s okay. You should go. It’ll be fine.’

Another long pause.

‘Okay,’ said Ken.

‘Keep — keep your phone on,’ Eric said, trying to sound nonchalant and aware he didn’t pull it off.

Ken felt another flare of anxiety at the insinuation. And then gratitude over the fact that Eric would be a phone call away. He glanced at Kitsune on the nightstand.

‘Okay.’

That night, Eric paced every inch of his apartment. His phone remained on the coffee table, silent and dark. Eric shot it glares every few minutes, even as he tried to occupy himself with other things. He tried making dinner, reading through a handbook, watching TV. Nothing worked.

His heart jumped to his throat when it lit up and rang. And the disappointment felt like an echo of a gong when he saw that it was his mother.

After he hung up, he was forced to confront the fact that he had been disappointed that Ken hadn’t called. He tried to process the fact that it meant things had gone well. He tried not to imagine where they were and what they were doing. He wondered if it had been this hard for Ken in the past, when Eric had been with girls. He remembered suddenly how Ken often reminded him when an anniversary was coming up. More than once, he had even enlisted Ken’s help when it came to gifts and gestures.

And so he hung his head on the couch and waited for something that had slipped through his fingers.

At midnight, even though he knew he shouldn’t, he picked up his phone with slow deliberation. His instincts were frayed at the edges and he didn’t trust them anymore. But he sent a single text.

When he got no reply, he sent another. It was more strongly worded.

When he didn’t hear anything, he called. His pulse was loud again. Ken picked up.

‘Eric?’ His voice shook.

Eric’s heart plummetted. His instincts converged again, doing a victory lap.

‘What’s wrong? What happened?’

‘Nothing happened,’ Ken thickly mumbled, after a pause. ‘Nothing… nothing happened. I’m —’

And then Eric realised he was drunk.

‘Where are you? Are you with him?’

‘No. He left. He was here, he was... here, but he’s left now,’ he said, the words slurring.

‘Did he — are you okay?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘I’m coming over.’

‘No, don’t.’

‘Stay there.’

He hung up.

Ken let the phone fall to his lap and took another long swig of vodka. He let his head fall back against the wall. One of his feet lost its grip on the floor and his leg shot out in front of him, surprising him somewhat.

He was pathetic. There was no end to how pathetic he was. There had been nothing wrong with Johann. He had reminded Ken of Eric in so many ways. They had had a good time, and Ken had begun to feel like his old self for the first time in so long. But what did he expect when he invited Johann back to his place? It was his fault for being surprised when Johann touched his waist and his hips. Ken had been pouring some vodka for them in the kitchen at the time. He was surprised when Johann turned him and kissed him and pressed their bodies together, which, even through their clothes, felt stifling and awful. He was surprised at how much he disliked it, and surprised at the force with which he pushed Johann away. Johann, in turn, was confused when Ken clamped his hand over his mouth. He tried to move closer again and was further confused when Ken flinched.

Neither knew what to do for a while. They had gone to a bar after dinner and were both slightly drunk. As Ken braced himself for what would follow, for what always followed, Johann muttered a few words under his breath before turning and leaving the apartment, slamming the door loudly behind him.

Half an hour later, when Ken was sitting on the kitchen floor, making his way through most of the vodka, Eric had called.

And then suddenly Eric was there in the kitchen. Ken squinted up at him uncertainly, his head lolling.

Eric hadn’t seen Ken drunk since university, and even then it hadn’t been to this extent. It almost scared him for a moment. Even if he reached down to try to pull Ken to his feet, he felt like he wouldn’t be able to pull Ken up from wherever he had actually fallen.

‘He’s right,’ Ken said, in a strange, low keen. ‘He’s right about me. I don’t know why I’m still — he was right.’

_You’re a fucking waste of time._

‘He was right.’

‘He wasn’t,’ Eric said firmly, unaware of whatever it was that the prick had said, but certain that he was wrong.

‘How do you know?’ Ken mumbled.

‘I just know, okay? He wasn’t right. About — about anything.’

‘He was. He was right.’

Eric grit his teeth and his final shred of patience disappeared. He crouched before Ken, tugged his head back a little more roughly than he had intended, and kissed his mouth. He did it only to prove to Ken that whatever the guy said had been wrong. And that was also why he pulled back, got back to his feet and continued glaring at Ken, as though annoyed he had to go so far just to prove a point.

‘Okay?’ he said, his voice just as blunt and angry as ever.

Ken stared.

He stared just like he had stared after a cab that drove away, or like when Adam hit him for the first time. He was just as shocked, and it felt just as unlikely. Just as unreal. And so he started sobbing.

Eric watched Ken fold into himself and begin wailing like a toddler.

‘What the hell, Ken?’ he said, his voice sounding numb.

And then it occurred to him what he had done. All the years he had undone in one thoughtless move.

‘Shit. Ken... I’m sorry.’

He hesitated for another moment before he crouched again, feeling like his hands were huge and useless. He didn’t know whether to touch Ken or not, whether he would recoil, whether it would make everything worse.

But when Ken sensed that Eric was nearby, he moved forwards slightly and gripped what he could. He sobbed and sobbed, aware of the sounds he was making, how loud and embarrassing they were. He cried even harder when Eric hesitantly pulled him closer.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Eric muttered. ‘Enough, already.’

But Ken didn’t have any control over it. And Eric was torn, in equal parts, between relief and mortification and confusion and frustration. And, somewhere behind everything, like a light being intermittently eclipsed and revealed, a flicker of something like hope.

He remained there, feeling Ken’s surprisingly strong grip on the front of his shirt, for a whole minute, but it didn’t look like Ken was about to stop crying anytime soon. And then when Ken’s body got heavier in his arms, annoyance managed to edge in ahead of the other emotions. He got to his feet and pulled Ken up with him, supporting most of his weight.

By the time they reached Ken’s bedroom and Eric lowered him onto the bed and removed Ken's shoes and crawled in beside him, he understood why Ken hadn’t stopped sobbing. He understood, vaguely, that the tears stretched back years, probably to a time when he hadn’t been able to do something as simple as cry. And so Eric sat up against the headboard and Ken clung to him again, his head spinning and the rest of his body limp. Eric guiltily smelled Ken's hair, saw the slender fingers gripping his shirt, felt the various and vague points of Ken’s body that were pressing against his, possibly drunkenly. He tried to ignore it all.

And he waited.

He glanced over at Ken’s nightstand where Kitsune perched beside the alarm clock, looking only slightly worse for wear given both his real-world age and his spirit age. All three tails were intact, as were the brown beads of eyes.

Eric stared back into its sly gaze, remembering the old story and hoping no fox spirit could accuse him of inaction ever again.

 


	5. ACT FIVE

Ken was still crying. And Eric, by then, was too tired to even roll his eyes. He didn’t know how much time had passed. At one stage, to keep himself occupied, he tried to remember the last time he had seen Ken cry. To his surprise, he had to go as far back as 2001, to the day of Ken’s father’s wake. He realised that Ken's tears back then must have come from his grief and confusion. They must have marked the end of a dark time in his life. Eric hoped, idly, that the same could be said of what was happening now.

He had almost fallen asleep by the time Ken finally stopped. He heard Ken take a few unsteady breaths. He glanced down.

‘You done?’ he asked.

Ken nodded.

Eric reached past Ken and open the top drawer of his nightstand, where he knew Ken usually kept a bottle of water beside his medication. He took the bottle out and unscrewed the cap.

‘Drink.’

Ken lifted his head and drank. He drained the bottle.

‘Want more?’

Ken shook his head.

There was a long pause. Eric wondered why he wasn’t feeling nervous at all. It didn’t seem the least bit strange to him that he was lying in bed beside an inebriated Ken, whom he had kissed not long ago.

Ken, meanwhile, was far from having caught up. Eric’s scent, which was everywhere, was throwing him off. He knew — he thought he knew — that Eric had kissed him. And now, what was left of his rational mind was trying to tell him something important. Despite the vodka, despite Eric’s scent and the undeniable, startling warmth of Eric's chest and arms, it was imperative that he clarified the situation. He tilted his face up and met Eric’s steady gaze.

‘You kissed me,’ he said.

Eric stared at his lips. ‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’

Eric almost swore under his breath. He glanced away, feeling nerves creep up on him for the first time at the thought of having to verbalise anything. He was on the point of shrugging, saying _I don’t know,_  deflecting in some way. The words were on the tip of his tongue. And then he caught Kitsune’s eye. And he clenched his teeth.

‘Because... I wanted to.’

He wanted to stop there but he could see orange in the corner of his eye.

So he added, sounding annoyed again, ‘For years.’

Ken’s eyes grew wide. ‘Years?’

‘I mean, not — not as long as you have. But…’

Ken felt Eric’s hand on his face and it was with a huge effort that he held back tears again. He reminded himself that Eric had seemed angry with him for crying, just like Adam and his father had been. It was dangerous for him to cry again so he held it back and tried to understand that Eric had wanted him for years. Years, he said. It didn’t make sense. Eric wasn’t a part of this world. Eric was always on the walls of his mind; two-dimensional. Untouchable. He was never real in these kinds of situations, no matter how much Ken fantasised about it. Not like this, where Ken could smell him and feel his hand cupping his jaw, fingertips in his hair.

‘Is this okay?’ Eric asked.

Ken nodded without understanding what he was approving.

Encouraged, Eric leaned down and kissed him again, far gentler this time. Ken's mouth was bitter from the vodka. He waited for Ken to respond, and he was ready to draw back at any moment if Ken looked like he would pull away.

Ken frowned. Eric was still on the walls, and he was struggling to peel him off; to align image with reality. It felt absurd. He started to feel sick.

Eric drew back. ‘Sorry,’ he said quietly, also removing his hand from Ken’s face.

He didn’t know what he had expected, but he realised he had gone too far too quickly. He was also thinking how strange it was that Ken’s lips should now be the focus of his senses; a part of Ken that had always been there, plainly on his face, for years, but now carried a wealth of new properties.

But Ken suddenly, powerfully, missed the warmth of Eric’s hand. The absurd comfort of his lips. He realised he felt sick because it was the only physical reaction his body could summon over the resolution of two decades of desire, mixed in with an unhealthy amount of vodka. It suddenly didn’t matter to him whether Eric was two-dimensional or not, or absurd or not. Kissing him was like a hundred nights spent on Eric’s couch wrapped in his blanket, or a thousand first-nights in Eric’s room when they were seven. And he wanted to feel that way again.

Eric, who wasn’t privy to any of these thoughts, was caught off-guard when Ken tilted his head up and kissed him. There was a different energy to it this time; a subtle change, but enough for him to feel it in his cock. His hands were on Ken’s face again, on his neck and arms. A few shifts later, Ken’s leg was moving up, brushing against the front of his pants and Ken registered that Eric was hard. Incredulity came first, followed closely by a familiar desire and an unfamiliar, pulsing fear.

Eric breathed in sharply when Ken’s hand moved to the front of his pants. He realised Ken wasn’t himself, and that they were both quickly losing control of the situation. He disengaged from Ken as much as he could.

‘You should sleep,’ he said, saying the first thing he could think of. ‘We shouldn’t — you should sleep.’

But a very loud voice was telling Ken to hold onto him. To hold to the dream, or whatever it was, no matter how much it scared him, before Eric slipped away again.

‘No.’

Eric looked down in surprise. He tried to take a calming breath. ‘I don’t want to do anything to you while you’re drunk.’

 _Do anything to you._ The words were said in Eric’s voice with the exact same inflection, or lack thereof, that Ken had known for years, which made it very difficult for Ken to appreciate what they were saying now. He fumbled for his own.

‘I want… I want you to. Please. We won’t be able to afterwards.’

Eric frowned. ‘What? Why?’

‘Because I’ll wake up,’ Ken said, his tone imploring.

Eric's frown deepened. He was on the point of correcting Ken’s strange mistake. But suddenly the look in Ken’s eyes and the hands that roamed and his sudden willingness was all a bit much. He had held back for too long. And suddenly he was kissing Ken again and Ken’s hands were in his hair and he had rolled Ken over onto his back and parted his legs to press between them, hard, and felt Ken’s hardness for the first time. It was all quite different to how he had imagined. It was more breathless. More specific. Ken’s scent was strong.

Ken felt pinned. Crushed. Eric was on top of him, pressing into him, and it was the safest feeling in the world. His hands were huge and they moved down towards the hem of his shirt. Suddenly, Eric's warm palm was on Ken’s bare skin, making its way up.

That was when a new half-formed thought slivered into Ken's mind. It made him anxious and tense.

Eric sensed it. He withdrew his hand. ‘What’s wrong?’

Ken faltered for some time. ‘I’m scared that you’ll — that you won’t like it.’

Eric stared. ‘That _I_ won’t like it?’

‘Because I don’t —’ Ken realised his arm was lying across half of his face. He wondered how it had gotten there. ‘I... have a penis.’

There was a small silence.

‘I know,’ Eric said in confusion.

‘And…’ Ken flailed. ‘And I have hair on my legs. Not much, but...’

Eric lifted his eyebrows, starting to understand. He almost felt the urge to smile.

‘I know,’ he repeated. ‘It'd be weird if you didn’t.’

Ken remained still for a while. Eric hesitated.

‘It’s okay if you don’t want to.’

‘I do, if you want to. If it’s you...’

Ken was beneath him, hiding part of his face, and he had spoken with a slightly drunken slur. But he had said the words Eric had guiltily fantasised, almost exactly, for a long time. He moved Ken’s arm away. Ken's bright, dark eyes reminded Eric of the kid who had waved at him happily from three feet away in their reading circle.

And he had the strange feeling that he was slowly bringing that Ken back to life with each new place he touched. With each piece of clothing he removed. Ken’s body was revealed to him slowly, and he was relieved to see that Ken looked healthy. Strong. Time had done away with the marks left on him by Adam. And Eric tried to make up for the marks they couldn’t see.

Ken’s moans and gasps created a cocoon around them. Eric let the sounds fill his head and he let Ken’s scent fill his lungs, the scent that changed on various parts of his body. He concealed his shock at the sight of Ken’s penis and testicles. Again, it was all far more specific than he had fantasised. But he recovered and dove willingly between Ken’s legs, hearing the sharp cry when his fingers pushed into Ken’s body for the first time.

As he worked his way back up, he wondered if he ought to be saying things. How beautiful Ken was or other similar platitudes and assurances that were completely alien to him. For the first time, he felt in over his head at the responsibility he had taken on board, perhaps because he felt guilty that he was about to fuck Ken. Should he have given more first? Should he _be_ giving more?

But when he hovered over Ken once more, he realised in a gentle epiphany this was all he needed to give. And his only mistake was how long it had taken him.

Ken made only a small sound when he pushed in. And Eric was surprised yet again; he was only halfway in and he was beginning to have grave doubts.

‘So tight,’ he muttered. ‘Fuck... Ken, you’re too tight. Can you… loosen up?’

Ken felt a flare of anxiety.

‘Sorry! I’m sorry, I —’

‘No,’ Eric growled. ‘That’s not what I meant. Just — does it hurt?’

‘No,’ Ken whimpered. ‘No, it feels good. Keep going.’

Eric sank into Ken’s neck and pushed in the rest of the way. They both paused. Ken’s moans were louder now, more real and rounded, and Eric breathed heavily. Ken thought of the brief glimpse he had of Eric kneeling between his legs, naked, his cock stiff and raring. It had made him feel like he was spinning, but now he felt pinned again, and secure again.

And Eric felt a singular rush. He realised how much Ken was his. Ken had been his for twenty years. That feeling began to take on a life of its own over the next few minutes. Ken’s voice and the hands that gripped his back and the heat of Ken’s body. It was all his.

‘Ah! Ugh, Eric…’

Ken didn’t know whether he was doing right. His father hated it when he cried out. Adam hated it when he didn’t. He was scared that at any moment Eric would be angry, that he would say something or lash out. He loved it when Eric’s whole body was pressing down on him as he thrust and he could feel the full weight of Eric's strong chest and arms. But he grew anxious when Eric reared back; when his face and eyes were far away.

But Eric, that time, didn’t sense his anxiety. He was encouraged with every moan, with the suppleness and willingness of Ken’s body. He reared back and pushed Ken’s legs up to his chest and kept going, plunging further in. He drew out fully and turned Ken over onto his stomach. He kissed the back of Ken’s neck and pushed into him again.

And Ken stiffened immediately. Fearfully. It was almost a convulsion. Eric felt it beneath him and he felt it in his cock when Ken's body suddenly clamped down on him hard enough to hurt. He gasped.

‘Ken?’

Ken heard Eric’s voice as though from far away. His mind had gone into slight shock, which itself was shocking in a strange kind of regression.

Eric’s intuition came through again. ‘You don’t like this position?’

Ken’s heart pounded and he pressed his forehead into the pillow. ‘I’m fine. It’s okay. I’m fine.’

His voice shook. Eric pulled out. He felt Ken slipping out of his grasp again.

‘Hey, hey. Ken. Look at me.’ He took Ken’s chin and turned his face around.

Ken tried to focus on his eyes. He remembered looking up at the fair-haired boy who handed him back his lunch box. He remembered seeing a kindness in his gaze that he didn’t want to lose sight of. Enough to follow him across the playground, saying whatever came to mind, hoping only to be by his side.

‘Tell me what you want,’ Eric said. ‘Okay?’

When Ken seemed to struggle still, as though caught somewhere in his panic, Eric moved off him and lay on his back.

‘Here,' he said gently. 'Come here.’

Ken slowly sat up and swung a leg over Eric's hips, just as he had done in his dream only that morning. He tried to lower himself onto Eric’s cock, which his dream counterpart had no problem doing. But he struggled. When Eric finally sank into him, fully, Ken moaned. But he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t want to move in case he moved wrong or in case he made a mistake that would disgust Eric or make Eric cast him aside. He remained there, frozen, head hung, for a few seconds. His anxiety spiked again when Eric sighed in frustration. He didn’t know Eric was angry at himself.

For Eric, meanwhile, it seemed as though nothing he tried was working. He lifted up onto one elbow and touched Ken's face again.

‘Tell me what you want,’ he repeated, trying to prepare himself for the likelihood that Ken would want to stop completely. ‘I’ll do whatever you want.’

Ken looked at him and tried to absorb the unfamiliar words. Their simple, profound meaning.

After a long pause, he said in a small voice, ‘Can we do it… like before? When you were on top?’

Eric’s heart lifted. ‘Are you sure?’

Ken nodded.

It was a momentary weakness on Eric’s part, more than anything, that led to him taking Ken in his arms and flipping him onto his back without much warning. Ken felt the breath knocked out of him, and Eric was above him and his cock was breaching Ken’s body once more, and he realised with no small degree of shock and relief that it was only exhilaration he felt.

And this time, Eric seemed to read his mind. He stayed low over Ken’s body. He kissed Ken often, hands on his jaw and neck, holding him down, his cock working up an intense heat in Ken’s body. A heat that was building and had only one place to go. Eric was also beginning to gasp. The feeling then was unlike anything he had known before.

‘I’m… going to come,’ Ken groaned. ‘I’m coming.’

And the feeling of it, the contractions of Ken's body, sent Eric over the edge. He didn’t have enough time to ask Ken for permission to do so; before he knew it he had thrust as deep as he could go and ejaculated into the intense heat of Ken’s body.

‘Ugh, I love you,’ he gasped. ‘Fuck, I love you, Ken.’

The words had flown from his mouth without his control.

Ken felt Eric collapse on top of him, panting. He'd heard the words. And the words were far more jarring than anything else that had happened that day. When he met Eric’s gaze, his eyes were wide and searching. And Eric, though annoyed at himself, stared back resolutely, in a way that said he meant what he had said.

Tears rushed up and clogged Ken's throat. In only a few short seconds, he was a blubbering mess yet again.

Eric moved back in shock. ‘For fuck’s sake.’

‘I’m sorry —’ Ken mumbled, chest heaving with sobs.

‘Goddamn it. I hate you when you’re drunk.’

‘I’m sorry.’

No one had ever told him that. Neither of his parents had ever once said it. Nor had Adam. Not even his grandmother had, even though he knew she must have loved him. She loved him enough to pass on her guardian spirit.

And Kitsune now watched as Eric rolled onto his side and waited once more for Ken to stop crying. It didn’t take him as long as last time. He was far less drunk now than before.

Eric shifted until Ken’s head was on his bicep. He curled his arm back over Ken’s head and his fingers dangled near Ken’s hair. They occasionally brushed through his fringe. He kept his eyes on Ken's face.

Ken didn’t like the feeling of Eric's stare. He was worried Eric would see something he didn’t like. He was relieved when Eric moved closer and wrapped his arms about him tightly.

Eric knew he had to ask. He wanted to ask just to bare the truth, just a little, just so he could share in the darkness of Ken’s past.

‘How come you don’t like doing it from behind?’ he asked.

Ken stiffened slightly in his arms. Eric tightened his hold.

‘Tell me.’

Ken was silent for a long time.

‘Adam… Adam used to press my face in… into the pillow.’ He paused. ‘Really hard. I passed out once.’

Eric closed his eyes. Rage coursed through him in fresh waves.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Ken was surprised. ‘You… couldn’t have done anything.’

Eric didn’t reply. He meant he was sorry for how long it had taken him. If he had realised a few years earlier, Ken would never have fallen into anyone else’s hands.

Ken breathed deeply. He wanted to touch Eric more. He wanted to run his hands over Eric's arms and chest. But exhaustion was creeping up on him like a shadow. His eyelids grew heavy.

‘Will it be the same tomorrow?’ he asked.

Eric glanced down. Nebulous though the question was, he understood it.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Go to sleep.’

‘Okay.’ Ken closed his eyes.

But when Ken asked, Eric had felt nervous. It had barely been an hour since he kissed Ken in the kitchen, and he had already made so many mistakes. Ken had drawn away and tensed up and even panicked. It made Eric feel like he was made of sharp metal pieces that kept hurting Ken at every turn, at every careless word. He wondered if he was really up to the task.

It was like a line had broken down the middle of Ken’s vision, even with his eyes closed. He opened them reluctantly and saw the strange way that the world seemed to have been cleaved in two, with spots appearing near the rift. And a pulsing started at his temples, on cue. For a few minutes, he focused on Eric’s gentle breaths. On the impossible fact that it was Eric he was lying against. But eventually, he let out a short, frustrated grunt which Eric heard.

Eric was roused from the brink of sleep. He recognised the furrowed brow. He reached over to the nightstand again, felt around for the medicine and took it out. Then he remembered Ken had already finished the water. He began to get out of bed when Ken opened his eyes again.

‘I can get it,’ he said, and tried to lift his head.

‘I got it,’ Eric said.

He then did a small double-take when he saw Ken sink gratefully back into bed and curl up slightly. His bare skin was striking against the white sheets.

As Eric left the bedroom, Ken wondered if he would be brave enough the following morning to ask Eric the questions that he longed to ask. When. And why. And why didn’t he say anything. And would he stay, even when Ken made mistakes, like when he forgot things or said the wrong thing or laughed too loud.

By the time Eric came back, Ken was already asleep. Eric put the bottle on the nightstand and carefully climbed in behind him, gathering him up in a move that felt like he had been doing it for years. He breathed out, long and loud, and fell asleep almost instantly. He forgot to switch off the lamp beside Kitsune.

He dreamed he had done it all differently, and he had done it right. When he was seven, he told his mother about his intuition that a boy in his school, a boy he had met that day whose name was Kenji, though he preferred Ken, was being treated badly by his father. Rebecca did everything carefully. She invited Ken over for a sleepover. She asked him questions. She asked him to speak to a police officer, who looked strangely like Eric himself but as an adult. And Ken’s father went away forever. In high school, Eric took a swing at Roy. He then took Ken’s wrist and pulled him into an empty classroom and kissed him as the door closed. He lay with Ken in a hammock in a bright patch of sunlight as Ken wrote his five-act tragedy, and submitted it. And a fox with three tails gambolled about them, and a dog with yellow fur lay nearby and paid it no mind. And Ken was safe, and Eric had him before anyone broke him, and he made up for all the long years they missed in real life.

When he awoke, it was nearly dawn, and Ken was cold.

* * *

It happened backwards. The panic set in first. And then he steadily grew calmer and calmer. Each new thing that was revealed — the fact that Ken wasn’t moving, the fact that he refused to wake up — seemed to send him further back, further away from the immediacy of it, so he didn’t feel it as much. His fingers were calm as they dialled. He calmly tried to wake Ken as he waited for the paramedics to arrive, the simmering panic receding more and more into denial as Ken continued to lie still. His hair was black and his skin was pale. It seemed like such a beautiful combination, all of a sudden.

He thought that again when they wheeled him away into the hospital. He was told to sit somewhere, so he sat. He could almost feel Ken’s schoolbag between his knees, with Kitsune hanging off the zipper.

The doctor came out a very short time afterwards. Eric got to his feet in relief.

‘The paramedics said they told you,’ the doctor said. ‘So you probably know all of this already. There wasn’t anything we could have done. Us, or them. It must have happened several hours ago. From initial scans it looks like an aneurysm. Migraines are a common symptom, in these kinds of cases...’

Eric listened in slight irritation, waiting for the doctor to say he could go in to see him.

‘It’s hard to tell when, exactly, but my guess is that it would have happened right after his last migraine. You told the paramedics he had one a few hours ago.’

‘Yeah, he gets them a lot.’

The doctor noted Eric’s use of present tense. It was normal for friends and relatives to struggle with small details like that; he had seen plenty of that kind of thing. But he was wary of the fact that Eric didn’t seem fazed even slightly. There was none of the initial shock that usually came before grief. The doctor wondered if he could have succumbed to denial so completely.

‘I’m very sorry,’ he tried tentatively.

Eric sighed, wondering how many times he had been apologised to that night.

‘Is he awake yet?’

The doctor’s heart fell, his suspicions confirmed. A long, ringing silence fell in the hospital corridor.

‘Your friend didn’t make it, son,’ the doctor said, slowly and clearly. ‘I’m sorry.’

Eric frowned again. He tried to shake the words away as though they were flies obscuring his vision. He opened his mouth and hesitated.

The doctor watched him for another few moments. He realised then that the young man lying dead in the emergency room had been dealt the merciful hand.

After the doctor took his leave, Eric stood there for a long time.

* * *

Saiko was old, and there were things about the world that she had never been able to face. And those were the reasons, Rebecca decided, that prevented her from looking too affected.

‘Yes, very sudden,’ Saiko would say to people who approached her with condolences. ‘Very sudden.’

Rebecca hovered near her that day, even though she didn’t know the woman at all, because there was nowhere else for her to be. And Saiko seemed a little out of place herself. She had flown back to the country just for the funeral, and to take Ken’s ashes back to Japan.

Whenever she had the chance, Rebecca checked her phone, though she knew with a hollow pang that there wouldn’t be a missed call or text. She hadn’t heard from Eric in days, ever since that first phone call. She had no idea where he was and it seemed her hope that he would come to Ken’s funeral had been misplaced.

‘Your boy,’ Saiko said suddenly. ‘I’m happy my Kenji had him. All this time.’

Surprised, Rebecca glanced round. Saiko had spoken softly, and there still wasn’t any emotion on her face. Rebecca found herself wondering where Ken had come from. Little Ken, whose heart had always been open to the world.

‘I’m glad, too,’ she said.

* * *

**2020**

There was a copy of The Little Prince lurking in his meagre collection. He threw it away. But not before he read it. He read it because he was looking for Ken everywhere. Looking for answers everywhere.

_So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near —_

_“Ah,” said the fox. “I shall cry.”_

_“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you…”_

_“Yes, that is so,” said the fox._

_“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince._

_“Yes, that is so,” said the fox._

_“Then it has done you no good at all!”_

_“It has done me good,” said the fox. “Because of the colour of the wheat fields.”_

It made no sense. And it cut Eric somewhere deep. Somewhere he couldn’t reach. So he threw it away and his hands trembled.

Three years sped by like they did in childhood. Eric would awaken to find entire seasons had passed. Months passed in a single breath. Years passed in the time it took for him to make it out of bed.

And the years caught up one day when he awoke from a nightmare, gasping.

He went to his closet and pulled out all of Ken’s boxes. All of his things that Eric had packed up and kept. He tore them open and things went flying. Shirts and CD and books and books. Shakespeare and Wilde and Marquez and Murakami soared to the far corners of his apartment.

Until he found it.

Blame was an interesting creature. He blamed himself for things in various ways. First he blamed his inaction; the years he had wasted doing nothing, being blind to everything, blind to Ken and to his own feelings. Then he blamed himself for what he _had_ done, the acuteness of what he had done in the lead-up to Ken's death. Surely he had a part to play in it. Whatever he did or didn’t do was surely to blame. And the rest of his life would be spent making up for the fact that Ken was gone. The rest of his life would be spent making up for the fact that Ken had died while Eric was in the kitchen, getting him some water.

But he knew, also, where to meter out blame where it was due.

He tore its head off. He tore off all three of its tails. He pulled at its body until it came apart at the seams. And he cried until he was spent, and even then he felt sly beads of eyes staring at him from somewhere he still couldn’t reach.

* * *

**2022**

By the time Eric found his phone, he noticed he had a missed call from Clare. He listened to her voicemail message and was glad he missed the call. She said she was happy he met her for coffee and that she had the number of the friend from work she'd been talking about. She said she was worried about him and that it was time he moved on. In the background, her children chattered in high, raised voices. He deleted the message.

* * *

**2024**

The job was steady enough, and provided just the right amount of distraction. He couldn’t tell how slowly or quickly time was passing. He was thirty-four and he still lived in the same studio apartment with the window that needed to be propped up by a steel pipe.

Even if he had focused for long enough, he had a feeling he wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to move. The couch was still there, dividing the room between living room and bedroom. The couch where Ken had lived for nearly a year, back when he was still recovering. Back when Eric was afraid to touch him, even though he wanted to, because Ken’s heart was raw and tender and looked like it might never heal.

The panic he felt on that dawn seven years ago, when he realised that Ken was stiff and cold in his arms, was the last time he had felt anything real. Everything after that — the denial that had enveloped him, the numb, aching disbelief, the drum beats of grief that stretched on with no end, even the rage he felt when he tore Kitsune apart — they all felt like shadows of real feelings.

And so he tried to feel again. That was why there was a half-Japanese boy in his bed, panting and writhing beneath him. He came inside him and felt a brief euphoria that almost immediately bottomed out. And he rolled away.

He had chosen well. The kid was similar to Ken in a lot of ways. He had the same height and build and hair. But his eyes were a lot narrower. And his smile didn’t take over his face in the unselfconscious way that Ken’s always did.

_I think you’ll be really good whether you practice or not. You’re the best one on the team._

His voice came to him all the time, across any number of years. He told the kid behind him to take the money and leave.

* * *

******2067**

Being at Rebecca’s funeral reminded Eric of the fact that he hadn’t gone to Ken’s. He remembered where he had been that day. He had gone to Ken’s place, crawled into the bed where Ken had died, and he had slept and slept. When he woke up, he drank, and then he slept some more.

His whole life had been a steady numbness that waited calmly for an end. It was part trauma, part guilt, part self-blame, all numbness, all grief. An elixir with no cure. Because of this, he had barely any room left for grief when his mother died.

But he was grateful that Rebecca had taken him in when he retired. She did so out of a motherly instinct that prevailed even at eighty. Eric had always been quiet, always surly — something she had always been secretly proud of. But she had intuited for a long time that there was now something darker behind his silences. Her son had been a ghost since he was twenty-seven. He had gone through something that simply couldn’t be fixed, and Rebecca understood that, even though she didn’t quite understand what it was. She sensed that he would need something to focus on after he was forced to give up his job, so she had given him herself to take care of.

And he had done that until she died twelve years later. She died hoping she had done everything she could, even though her son had quietly suffered in his own private pain for so long.

After her funeral, Eric went back home. He had moved back into the house in which he had grown up. He slept in the master bedroom now, and his mother had slept in the guest room downstairs when she grew too weak to go upstairs every night.

That day, Eric walked upstairs slowly, taking it easy on joints that were slowly rusting over, and walked past the master bedroom down the hall and into his old room.

It had changed a lot in seventy years. But in that moment Eric saw what had once been. The action figures and dinosaurs. The bin that was toppled and a laugh that echoed. A small fox toy that was clutched in a small hand. He stood there in the room where Ken had felt safe for the first time and he cried for Ken, and for his mother, and for the years that sometimes fled by and for the moments that sometimes dragged on.

* * *

**1997**

It was another cloudless spring day in Goulston Elementary School.

Ken doubled over on the small soccer field, hands on his knees. He had tried to keep up with the bigger kids but had failed woefully. He had managed to kick the ball only once, and it had gone flying out of bounds.

Eric approached him with a scowl.

‘You’re really bad,’ he said.

Ken grinned. ‘I know.’

Eric bristled a little at that. He toed the ground and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

‘But you’re good at reading,’ he said in a low mutter, thinking of the previous day. ‘I like how you read the fox’s voice.’

Ken flopped onto the ground. ‘I’m good at foxes. I think because Kitsune talks to me sometimes.’

Eric glanced over at Ken’s bag, which was on the edge of the field.

‘That’s not true.’

‘It is!’ Ken insisted. ‘He tells me things, sometimes. But not always.’

Eric sat too, though he didn’t realise he was doing it. The way Ken spoke was ridiculous but he couldn’t help being caught in its orbit.

‘So then what was something he said?’ Eric said, trying to sound scathing but instead sounding reluctantly curious.

Ken tried to think back. ‘He said I’m like him. And I’ll be going back one day.’

‘Back where?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ken said honestly.

He only knew that it was a promise that he had clung to for years. It was a promise that he would be going somewhere where he wouldn’t have to be hurt by his father anymore. But now, over the past few days since he met Eric, he found he didn’t cling to that hope as strongly. In fact, he hoped Kitsune was wrong.

‘Will you stay here if we’re friends?’ Eric asked suddenly, playing with a blade of grass.

Ken was startled.

Eric himself didn’t know what made him say that, aside from a begrudging sense that he and Ken were friends already anyway, for all intents and purposes. But he said it mostly because he didn’t like the idea that Ken might be whisked away by something, somewhere. It left him feeling unsettled.

‘I think so,’ Ken replied. ‘I don’t know.’

Eric considered this for some time. ‘Well, we’re friends now,’ he said firmly. And somewhat loudly. Loud enough for the stupid fox toy in Ken’s bag to hear him.

Ken beamed.

Before giving Ken the chance to say something loud and annoying, Eric made his next decision. ‘I’ll teach you how to play soccer better.’

Ken hurriedly got to his feet. Eric led the way back into the middle of the field. For the second time that day, Ken sent a quick prayer of thanks to his Kitsune and asked for permission to stay there, where he was, for a little while longer.

  

_Fin_


End file.
